An Evaluation of Pledges to Eradicate Statelessness in the SADC legal documentation, stateless persons’ freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention is compromised. Further, stateless persons face severe psychological impacts, as they are unable to live a normal life (Warria and Chikadzi, 2022). The very nature of statelessness makes it difficult to assess its scope accurately. On the one hand, the UNHCR reported in 2023 that there were 4.4 million stateless persons globally (UNHCR Global Trends, 2023). This figure is heavily caveated, as it is based on data from 95 countries that report data on statelessness, with the UNHCR stating that half of all countries do not report any data on statelessness. In 2020, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (hereafter “ISI”) published that there were around 15 million persons globally who were stateless (ISI, 2020). Thus, it is not possible to put an exact number on the stateless population, and any official estimate is likely far less than the true number. Data collection is a key concern for the GCR and its larger framework, as discussed earlier, yet this goal is complicated by many of the systemic challenges that cause and exacerbate statelessness. Stateless persons within the African continent form part of a vulnerable group of persons who are faced with several forms of human rights abuses. Some of the largest estimated stateless populations in the world are found in Southern Africa with conflict exacerbating already high numbers of forcibly displaced and stateless persons in the DRC and Mozambique (UNHCR Global Trends, 2023). Statelessness in the Southern African region is primarily attributed to colonial histories, long-term forced displacement and migration, discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, and discriminatory gender laws that do not allow women to pass their nationality to their children on the same grounds as men (Manby, 2009). Further contributing to the issue is the lack of provisions for nomadic and cross-border populations, deficient dual nationality laws, the denial of access to naturalization, provisions with regards to state succession, a lack of access to nationality documentation, abusive withdrawal of citizenship, and poor civil registry systems (Manby, 2009). Structural discrimination in society is a leading cause of statelessness globally, particularly discriminatory gender laws (Manby, 2009; Beninger and Manjoo, 2023). In several African countries, as is the case in many other countries, direct discrimination is found in patriarchal nationality laws that fail to ensure that women have equal rights in conferring nationality to their children as men. Furthermore, an unregistered marriage is likely to result in an unregistered birth. In countries upholding discriminatory nationality laws against women and where women are barred from conferring their nationality to the child, the lack of a marriage certificate will mean that the child may become stateless. Numerous scholars have brought attention to the lack of literature regarding gender and statelessness, which is troubling, as gender discrimination is the main cause of statelessness (Beninger and Manjoo, 2023). There have, nonetheless, been judicial challenges to discriminatory nationality laws. In Botswana, the Court of Appeal presided over a milestone judgment in Attorney-General v. Dow (1992) where it approved a woman’s right to pass on her citizenship to her children and spouse. 117