Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Syria If a Syrian mother has a child to an unknown father in Syria, she is required to submit a case before a religious court to register the birth of her child. A customary or religious marriage is not enough to register the birth of a child; the marriage must be formally registered through a court ruling. 4.2 Accessing Consular Services Abroad In 2017, the Syrian Government made amendments to civil status laws to enable increased access to registration of civil status events for Syrians abroad. According to Act No. 4 of 2017 (amending Legislative Decree No. 26 of 2007) civil status events are able to be “…registered in the place they occurred, the place of residence, Syrian embassies or consulates, or in the embassy or consulate charged with protecting the interests of Syrians.”57 If a person is unable to access an embassy or consulate, pursuant to Article 17(a) of the Syrian Civil Affairs Law (No. 4 of 2017), “…the Syrian citizen should obtain a certificate of the event or a certified copy from the competent authorities in the place of the event and submit it to the directorate of civil affairs in Syria, responsible for the concerned person’s record.”58 Despite these reforms, challenges remain for Syrian nationals in accessing consular services abroad, as the consulates may be physically inaccessible. In addition, children at risk of statelessness may have difficulty accessing civil documentation from consular services abroad, as they cannot prove a legal link to Syria.59 Syrian refugees may fear persecution if they access consular services abroad, particularly if they have been opposed to the Syrian authorities or are perceived to be. 4.3 Children at Increased Risk of Statelessness Due to Civil Documentation Issues The following profiles of childrenare potentially at risk of statelessness in Syria on the basis of facing barriers to obtaining or verifying civil documentation: 60 • Children without a birth certificate;61 • Children born to survivors of sexual violence;62 in the Syrian Arab Republic, at 22, available at: https://www.unhcr.org/sy/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/09/Personal-DocumentationEn-Jul-2018.pdf 57 Committee on the Rights of the Child, List of issues in relation to the fifth periodic report of the Syrian Arab Republic – Addendum - Replies of the Syrian Arab Republic to the list of issues, 9 November 2018, at 3, available at: https://undocs.org/CRC/C/SYR/Q/5/ADD.1 58 UNHCR and Syrian Arab Republic Ministry for Interior (Civil Affairs Directorate), Civil Documentation and Registration in the Syrian Arab Republic, at 19, available at: https://www.unhcr.org/sy/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/09/Personal-DocumentationEn-Jul-2018.pdf. Also see, Committee on the Rights of the Child, List of issues in relation to the fifth periodic report of the Syrian Arab Republic – Addendum - Replies of the Syrian Arab Republic to the list of issues, 9 November 2018, at 3-4, available at: https://undocs.org/CRC/C/SYR/Q/5/ADD.1 59 For example, UNHCR stated in 2015, “over 60,000 Syrian children have been born in Lebanon to refugees registered with UNHCR since the beginning of the crisis, but nearly 70 percent of them do not have a registered birth certificate with the competent Lebanese authorities.” See: UNHCR and Government of Lebanon, Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2015-16, 15 December 2015, at 91-92, available at: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/44367 60 Please note, this is not an exhaustive list of persons at risk of statelessness due to civil documentation issues in Syria. For a further discussion on statelessness and civil documentation for Syrian refugees outside Syria, please see: Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion / European Network on Statelessness, From Syria to Europe: Experiences of Stateless Kurds and Palestinian Refugees from Syria Seeking Protection in Europe, January 2019, available at: http://www.institutesi.org/from_Syria_to_Europe.pdf 61 UNHCR, End of Year Report – 2018, 17 February 2019, at 6, available at: https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/UNHCR%20Syria%27s%20End%20of%20Year%20report%202018.pdf. However, as noted above, UNHCR also states, “On its own, lack of birth registration does not usually mean that a person is stateless or even at risk of statelessness. However, possession of a birth certificate helps to establish entitlement to nationality and is often a prerequisite for obtaining documentation that proves nationality”, see: UNHCR, Good Practices Paper - Action 7: Ensuring birth registration for the prevention of statelessness, November 2017, at 3, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a0ac8f94.html 62 UNHCR, End of Year Report – 2018, 17 February 2019, at 6, available at: https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/UNHCR%20Syria%27s%20End%20of%20Year%20report%202018.pdf 11