Attorney General of Botswana v. Unity Dow
High Court case in the Republic of Botswana
Attorney General of Botswana v. Unity Dow (sometimes abbreviated Attorney General v. Dow, Civil Appeal No. 4/91, and known locally as the Citizenship Case or Dow Case) was a landmark decision of Botswana's Court of Appeal. The case upheld the decision brought to the High Court of Botswana, by the lawyer, Unity Dow, who would go on to become a judge on the High Court and a government minister. It declared provisions of the 1984 Citizenship Act, which barred children from receiving nationality from their mothers, to be unconstitutional. It resulted in the passage of the 1995 Citizenship Act of Botswana, which eliminated gender disparities in the law. The case sparked women to press for changes to nationality laws across Africa.
Background
In 1990, Unity Dow, a Motswana lawyer and the plaintiff filing suit in the High Court of the Republic of Botswana challenged the nationality statues of Botswana. The action, Unity Dow v Attorney-General (Botswana) (High Court of Botswana Misca.
“Attorney General of Botswana v. Unity Dow” enters the record as high Court case in the Republic of Botswana. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Attorney, General and Botswana can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Attorney General of Botswana v. Unity Dow” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.