192 A. J. PETROZZIELLO statelessness. Although progress has been made in increasing birth registration coverage (UNICEF, 2024), reaching the 150 million children under five who remain unregistered may require concerted efforts to reach the multiply marginalized. An intersectional approach helps to overcome the prevailing siloed, single-issue approach to the study of birth registration as a matter of children’s rights, revealing patterns and mechanisms of exclusion affecting multiply marginalized population groups. Whereas exclusion from birth registration has been studied primarily as a matter of children’s rights, the fact that recommendations on the matter have been issued by practically all the treaty bodies reveals the interlinkages between multiple (1) types of discrimination and (2) types of rights violations. Yet, the outcome is the same: child statelessness. Using intersectionality as method starts from a rather simple premise. As Matsuda once suggested, this entails “asking the other question” (1996, p. 123). That is, if something at first glance seems racist, one can ask, “Where is the patriarchy in this?” Methodologically, one could look to both the CERD and the CEDAW to examine those intersections. Or when something at first glance seems like a good practice—like linking birth registration to social protection for children with disabilities—methodologically, one might look to the CRPD, CMW and CERD to ask, “Is this true for all newborns?” If, as the intersectional human rights literature on treaty bodies suggests, intersectionality as it is currently applied in the UN human rights treaty bodies is quite limited (Bond, 2021; Chow, 2016; Xanthaki, 2019), then one method by which researchers can overcome the structural constraints of the system is to choose one issue and examine the related recommendations issued by all of the treaty bodies. This can be done for a single country or, where recommendations have already been compiled thematically, as in the ISI’s Database on Statelessness and Human Rights (ISI, 2020), it can be done at the regional or global level, working backward from the recommendation to examine the documentation submitted as part of each review cycle through feminist content analysis. Intersectionality may also be useful for human rights practice by establishing links and collaboration among the various UN committees. In recent years, dialogues and joint general comments by multiple committees have clarified the rights obligations for children born to parents on the move.12 The CEDAW Committee has engaged in intersectional dialogues with other treaty bodies. In an interview for this project, vice-chairperson Nahla Haidar remarked that they had “broken the silo[ed approach] in the last few years”13 by issuing jurisprudence on women and girls, and engaging in dialogue with the CRC and the CMW on the issues of birth registration and nationality. Similarly, the CERD’s forthcoming joint General Recommendations 38 and 39, together with the CMW, recommend that states take an intersectional approach when developing public policies for addressing xenophobia and its impact on the human rights of migrants—including nondiscrimination in the issuance of birth certificates. In sum, intersectionality enables linked-up thinking among the committees, which helps both to diagnose human rights harms affecting the multiply marginalized and to prescribe proactive measures to combat intersectional discrimination. These links demonstrate the value not only of intersectionality but also of relationality. Adopting a relational perspective on the mother–child dyad enables linked-up thinking about the connections between rights violations, inter alia the mother’s access to sexual and reproductive health and the newborn child’s access to the right to identity and a nationality. The relationship between under-registration of birth and impediments that multiply marginalized groups face in accessing maternal and child healthcare is well documented but under-theorized. Although feminists have critiqued the constant bundling of “women-and-children” (Enloe, 1991; Rosen & Twamley, 2018), in this instance it is necessary to make the mother–child dyad central to the analysis. Babies do not emerge from nowhere; biologically, their bodies are linked to their mothers’, and sociopolitically, their status and ability to come into legal being remain linked to their birth parents as well. Following Rosen and Twamley (2018), it may be necessary to move beyond the binary of elision of “motherandchild” vs. antagonism between the two, by adopting a relational and intersectional approach.