Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Syria 1. SUMMARY OF MAIN ISSUES 3 • Syria has historically been home to large stateless populations, particularly members of the Kurdish minority population, who were stripped of citizenship in 1962 following a deeply flawed and arbitrary census in northern Syria. Although the Syrian government introduced a decree aimed at resolving statelessness in 2011, many Kurds, and their children, remain stateless and unable to apply for nationality. Prior to the outbreak of the civil war, over half a million Palestinians also lived in Syria, without access to naturalisation. • Syria’s nationality law contains various gaps and flaws that lead to statelessness, including discrimination against Syrian women in transferring their nationality to their children. In the present context of mass forced displacement, the gender discriminatory nature of Syria’s nationality law is of serious concern. It can leave children stateless if they have a Syrian mother and, for instance, an unknown or stateless father, or if their parents were unable to legalise their marriage. • The Syrian civil war has seriously constrained and continues to prevent access to civil registries within Syria, as many have been damaged or destroyed. These registration challenges have been further compounded by non-state actors in territories outside government control using different civil documentation systems. Children are at risk of statelessness if their parents’ marriage has not been registered, if the marriage documents have been lost, or if their father is unknown, deceased, disappeared or separated from the family. • There are no specific procedures, laws or protection mechanisms in Syria tailored to the protection of the rights of stateless individuals, other than for Palestinian refugees from Syria. Due to their lack of documentation, stateless individuals face many obstacles in the enjoyment of basic rights, such as education, property rights and the right to travel, among others. There are a wide range of protection risks associated with being stateless from Syria both inside and outside the country. • While there have been recent reforms to increase access to consular assistance for Syrian nationals abroad, challenges remain in accessing civil documentation, leading to difficulties in establishing legal identity. In addition, Syrian refugees and asylum seekers cannot be expected to contact a Syrian embassy or consular services abroad as it could put them at risk of persecution and/or undermine their refugee status or asylum claim. • The ongoing discrimination in the Syrian Nationality Law, coupled with one of world’s biggest humanitarian crises, has significantly increased the risk of statelessness within and outside of Syria.