Feminist Foresight in Statelessness whether Hudson’s personal frustrations with feminist campaigners led to the exclusion of any reference to gender discrimination in both the 1954 Statelessness Convention and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. 128 The case of Ireland enabled us to look at how opposition to citizenship equality can hang in the balance between geopolitics, international pressure (or shame) and local dominant-religious mores, and consequently how women’s rights can be used as a political football. In the 1920s, Ireland feared being known by international feminist movements as opposing equal citizenship. And so while Ireland claimed not to be under pressure from local feminist groups to ameliorate the matter, the ruling party in 1926 dismissed the issue, reckoning that the Irish ‘are a conservative people’. 129 In 1934, the same political party, no longer in power, challenged the then ruling party’s failure to eradicate GDNL. Examples of this kind of rhetorical gamesmanship on the part of governments who superficially support women’s equality, but never reflect such sentiments in practice, are frustrating to campaigners down to the present day. Thus, while Ireland’s Prime Minister, Éamon de Valera, was seen by some in Geneva as a leader against GDNL, he did not display the courage at home to deviate from global trends and fully eradicate GDNL. Furthermore, the fact that decades later, in the 1950s, Irish women were granted equal citizenship rights ahead of Ireland’s former colonisers, shows how fiercely Ireland wanted its citizenship laws to differ from Britain’s. 130 In postcolonial countries where GDNL prevails as a result of inherited laws, it may be worth playing on decolonial sentiment, emphasising that the eradication of colonial influence is today well overdue. A Whitewashed and a Forgotten History In a fascinating twist of fate, the first Global Forum on Statelessness in 2014 was held at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the same historical grounds as in the 1930 conflict. The Global Forum was said to have marked the 60th anniversary of the 1954 Statelessness Convention. 131 But when feminist history is included, the Forum in fact marked the 84th anniversary of the infamous Palace protest lock-out. These two events stand in sharp contrast to one another. With almost a century between them, GDNL as a cause went from being locked out of the Palace gates, to being openly addressed within them. In contemporary statelessness literature, the gap in general awareness of the early campaigns, may be due to the fact that several authors of the 1930s campaigns are historians, and their works were simply missed. Indeed, authors who work on the early campaigns for citizenship equality note how relatively unexplored this dimension of twentieth century feminist history is. 132 Unfortunately, in addition to the lack of attention paid to earlier campaigns, most historians do not refer to the ongoing existence of GDNL at the time of their 128 129 130 131 Brennan (n 117) 175. Daly (n 7) 250 ibid 245. Lindsey N Kingston, ‘Conceptualizing Statelessness as a Human Rights Challenge: Framing, Visual Representation, and (Partial) Issue Emergence’ (2019) 11(1) Journal of Human Rights Practice 52, 57. 132 DuBois (n 7) 204; Bredbenner (n 1) 2; Irving (n 7) vii; Amorosa (n 7) 416. 61