UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS IN THE SYRIA REFUGEE CONTEXT  Secondly, as highlighted in the previous section, access to Syrian nationality is problematic due to the gender discriminatory nature of the country’s nationality law. Acquiring Syrian nationality at birth relies on the father being a Syrian citizen. There are very few circumstances in which a mother can transmit her nationality – and none apply when the child is born abroad.48 The inability of mothers to transfer nationality to their children makes the situation particularly complicated in a country witnessing such large-scale displacement and separation of families. Thus, there were stateless individuals in Syria prior to the crisis who were left without nationality due to gaps in the application of the nationality law or individual loss or deprivation of nationality.49 2.1.3 IDENTITY AND CIVIL DOCUMENTS IN SYRIA According to a World Bank report: “Lack of identity documents is an important obstacle to the protection of people forced to leave their homes by conflict, persecution, or natural disaster [and] those who lack identity documents may face greater difficulties proving their entitlement to nationality or to refugee status”.50 Documents issued in Syria allow for the confirmation of identity, prove nationality and demonstrate the link to the country of origin.51 On the other hand lack of (a particular) document(s) from Syria can create a challenge for refugees in accessing civil registration, obtaining civil documentation, and/or obtaining identity documents in their host country – creating or perpetuating a cycle of lack of proof of identity or of the link to Syria. It is therefore important to understand the situation of documentation of refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries. It is also important to acknowledge that there were flaws with the Syrian civil registration system before the conflict which have been further exacerbated as a result of the civil war.52 One example is the lack of digitisation of records in Syria, which meant that registration records were only kept in hard-copy and not computerised.53 This presents a problem in the context of the reported destruction of some of the civil registries,54 whereby the only record of the existence of Syrian nationals – particularly the registration of vital events such as births – and their link to Syria may have been lost. Some Syrian national and local customs may also affect access to certain documents or procedures within the host country. The tradition in Syria, for example, of first performing the Ketb Al Ktab marriage ceremony and waiting a long time before officialising the marriage with the authorities is an example of this. If this practice is continued by displaced families, it can lead to problems as more importance is given to official marriage registration in other countries in the region – and the official marriage certificate plays a critical role in the registration of the birth of a child who is subsequently born within the union.55 Further details of the Syrian system of civil documentation are provided in the next section. 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Palestinian statehood and Palestinian nationality policy. Moreover not all persons of Palestinian origin are similarly situated in terms of nationality. For a discussion of these issues, see Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, The World’s Stateless, supra n39, chapter 3.VIII. Syrian Nationality Law. The profiles of these different stateless populations in Syria are discussed further in chapter 5 of this report. B. Manby, Identification in the context of forced displacement, supra n5, page 1. Such as identification documents, nationality documents and proof of vital events such as births, marriages and deaths. For more information on the civil registry system in Syria before the conflict, please see IRC and UNHCR, Civil Status Documentation in Non-Government Areas of Northern Syria, supra n18. A project to complete digitalisation of all Syrian records was initiated as a joint initiative between the government and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), but never completed. UNHCR, Addressing Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, supra n14, page 12. See also, UNHCR, Addressing Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, supra n14, page 21. RESEARCH REPORT 19