Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2016/05 Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, precisely because most Syrian refugees are mostly hosted in these countries. 2. Syrian childhood statelessness in the context of the refugee crisis and biased nationality laws International legal instruments guarantee each individual the right to a nationality7 which constitutes a legal bond between an individual and the state.8 The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)9 requires that “each child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name [and] the right to acquire a nationality,”10 as well as it provides that „every child has the right to a nationality, and states shall ensure that this right is fulfilled.” 11 Further to this, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) equally establishes that “each child has the right to acquire a nationality”.12 The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness suggests that children are to acquire the nationality of the country in which they are born if they do not acquire any other nationality.13 These provisions gain additional importance in case of children born to (stateless) refugees, considering that in the lack of appropriate birth registration they are legal ghosts being extremely vulnerable to early marriage, trafficking in human beings and recruitment as child soldiers.14 Childhood statelessness in the MENAT region has a historical background that needs to be understood in order to duly address the emerging problem of statelessness deeply rooted in the region of concern and put it in the context of the refugee crisis of today. Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, statelessness was already a major human rights challenge in Syria with respect to the Kurdish minority15 which was not only an unintended by-product of nationality legislation but rather a political tool. 16 As a result of an arbitrary census conducted in 1962, 17 a great number of Kurds lost their nationality and became stateless.18 This arbitrary measure itself constitutes a severe violation of a distinct international human rights norm, namely the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality.19 As an interesting development at the dawn of the Arab Spring in 2011, President Assad passed a decree allowing one group of stateless persons (’the foreigners’) to restore their nationality by applying for naturalisation 20 . Notwithstanding, it is important to see that many of the newlynaturalized Syrian Kurds and the remaining stateless population (’the unregistered’) soon became either internally displaced within Syria or stateless refugees seeking shelter in other neighbouring countries together with other refugees. However, there is a significant difference between stateless refugees and those with an established Syrian nationality in terms of readmission to post-conflict Syria. 7 Including, for instance, Article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Article 2 (a) of the European Convention on Nationality. 9 The most widely ratified human right treaty in history, ratified by the concerned MENAT counries as well. 10 Article 7 of the UNCRC. 11 Ibid. Article 8. 12 Article 24(1) of the ICCPR. 13 Article 1 (3), Article 5 (2). 14 Birth registration in Turkey: Protecting the future for Syrian children, Refugees International (2015). 15 L Tas, Stateless Kurds and their multiple diaspora, IMI Working Papers Series 2016, No. 125, January 2016, p 1-21.; L Tas: How international law impacts on statelessness and citizenship: the case of Kurdish nationalism, conflict and peace, International Journal of Law in Context, Volume 12 / Issue 01 / March 2016, pp. 42-62. 16 Z Albarazi on the stateless Syrians, Tilburg Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series No. 011/2013. 17 The census was conducted in one day, therefore, those who were not present on the day of the census, were not registered as citizens. 18 After 1962 two groups of stateless persons emerged; the ‘foreigners’ and the ‘unregistered’. 19 T Molnar: The Prohibition of Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality under International Law and European Law: New Perspectives, Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law (2014), Eleven Publishing, The Hague, 2015, pp. 67-92. 20 Even though foreigners could apply for naturalization, the applicable fees were so high that in reality very few people had the means to apply, as explained by Ms. Aven Ahmad, Kurdish Center for Legal and Studies and Consultancies: Side event of the 9th session of the Forum on Minority issues, ’Excluded: stateless minorities in times of crisis’, Geneva, November 2016. 8 2