“When my son was born premature, he had to be in an incubator... I suddenly received a heavy bill that I had to pay. I told them “I am Omani it’s free medical care” and they responded “you have a foreigner child...this creature is a foreigner, so you have to pay the bill” Habiba al-Hinai Omani Association for Human Rights N ationality laws in 25 countries deny women equal rights as men to pass nationality to their children. Roughly 50 countries (a quarter of the world’s states), deny women equal rights to acquire, change or retain nationality, or confer nationality on nonnational spouses. Gender discrimination in nationality laws can cause and perpetuate statelessness across generations, by denying equal access to nationality to children, women and their spouses. Discrimination, patriarchy, stigma, structural barriers to birth registration and failed integration of migrants and refugees all result in statelessness for millions of children. With stateless persons overwhelmingly inheriting statelessness from their parents, the cost of childhood statelessness is incalculable. The themes of women and children were prevalent across the three days of the ISI’s World Conference in various different ways. Two Grand Challenges sessions focused on gender and children respectively, with these issues also being touched upon in many other sessions and workshops. Gender workshop and Closed-Door Meeting During the Conference, an expert roundtable took place on ‘Statelessness, gender and intersectionality: towards a more nuanced understanding of who is stateless, why and what this means for our work.’ The meeting began with a discussion on feminist theory, considering what intersectional feminism is, how it was developed, why this approach is important in regards to statelessness, and how we can implement intersectionality into our work. Considering then the gender discrimination in nationality laws, the inequality of legislation is indicative of the wider patriarchal framework we exist within, with the Omani context highlighted as an example. Finally, before a wider discussion on how to move forward, research into indirect discrimination and children’s nationality rights was considered. Following this session, a conclusions document was drawn up and shared with participants to help inspire and inform future conversations. 12