Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Syria (ratified in June 2019).94 This military service does not equate to recognition as a citizen by the Syrian Government, and, as such, internally displaced stateless Kurds, or stateless Kurdish refugees, must not be assumed to hold citizenship by virtue of having served in the military for the Kurdish-led SelfAdministration. 5.1.3 Developments: Access to Nationality for Stateless Kurds under Decree No. 49 of 2011 On 7 April 2011, President Bashar al-Assad ordered that Ajanib of al-Hassaka could reacquire citizenship through Decree No. 4995 However, in practice it was not possible for all to access this. Maktumeen were not mentioned and were therefore effectively excluded. Decree No. 49 of 2011 Applied to: Ajanib (if: inside Syria; able to access a specific district; and have all of their family members present) Excluded: Maktumeen; Ajanib unable to meet eligibility requirements; stateless persons in third countries (including Ajanib) The exact figure of how many stateless persons acquired citizenship is difficult to estimate, as numbers have not been released in recent years. 96 UNHCR reported in mid-2013 that 104,000 individual Kurds had acquired citizenship.97 In September 2016, Syria stated, “the number of persons concerned by that measure [Decree No. 49 of 2011] was 124,949; the number of applicants was 115,450, who obtained citizenship, together with their families.”98 As mentioned above, not all Ajanib were able to benefit from this process due to difficulties relating to stringent document requirements, the obligation to register in a specific district and the need to process the request with all family members present. In addition, these developments exclusively applied to the Ajanib sub-section of the stateless Kurds, and therefore Maktumeen had no opportunity to reacquire Syrian citizenship. In practice, this also meant that many Kurds who had fled Syria during the civil war were unable to reacquire Syrian citizenship, as they remained outside Syria. Most recent estimates suggest there are 253,672 Syrian refugees in Iraq, mostly in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).99 There are known to be a significant number of stateless Kurds from al-Hassaka in Syria who are or were displaced in the KRI (even though they are incorrectly recorded The 2019 Law of Self Defence in Northern and Eastern Syria, Article 1(d) Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Thematic Report on Conditions in Syria, 23 October 2017, at 3.5, available at: https://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/country-information-report-syria.pdf 96 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, at 9, available at: http://www.institutesi.org/from_Syria_to_Europe.pdf 97 UNHCR, Global Report 2012 – Syrian Arab Republic, 19 June 2013, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/51b1d63cb.html 98 UN Human Rights Council, Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review – National Report of the Syrian Arab Republic, 28 September 2016, at 40, available at: https://undocs.org/en/A/HRC/WG.6/26/SYR/1 99 UNHCR, Fact Sheet – Iraq, April 2019, available at: http://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/UNHCR%20Iraq%20Factsheet%20-%20April%202019.pdf. This figure relates to Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR as of 31 March 2019. Figures on the amount of unregistered Syrian refugees in Iraq are not available. Also see 3RP, Operations Portal – Refugee Situations – Syria Regional Refugee Response – Iraq, 30 April 2019, available at: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria/location/5, which quotes the figure as 253,371. 94 95 17