 UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS IN THE SYRIA REFUGEE CONTEXT In Syria, citizens obtain their National Identity Card, called hawiya, at the age of 15 years.56 This document confirms the Syrian nationality of the holder. The Syrian government also issues a family booklet, Deftar Ayli. The family booklet is a document issued by the Syrian government which records the members of a family and is evidence of both parental identity and marital status for displaced families. Many IDPs and refugees have lost their civil documents during the conflict. Furthermore, the conflict has negatively impacted access to civil registration and the process of document issuance, renewal and replacement. Data collected inside Syria captured in the Humanitarian Situation Overview of Syria revealed significant disparities between different Governorates in this respect, but reportedly, less than half of the population were able to obtain or replace identity documents in most areas of Syria.57 According to the 2015 Whole of Syria Protection Assessment overseen by the protection cluster, over ninety percent of Syrians considered the lack of civil documentation as an issue of concern.58 In areas outside government control, nonState actors have established their own civil registration systems and started to issue their own documents. In Jordan, many of the refugees have come from areas surrounding Dar’a, a city that was central to the civil registration process in the district which it covers, but also, since the onset of the conflict, a hotspot for fighting. For Noor, registration of her marriage in 2012 would have had to take place in Dar’a. She lived just outside the city but due to the conflict, was unable to go to the registry office to apply for the new family booklet or any other document. Because of this, her marriage to her husband, who has remained in Syria while she fled to Jordan, has not been recorded anywhere.59 Stateless persons who lived in Syria before the conflict may have held different documents to those possessed by nationals. They would not, for example, possess a hawiya, which is reserved for nationals. The stateless Ajanab Kurd might have a bitaqa ajanabi or so-called ‘red card’ which is an identification document specifically tailored for this population. Stateless Maktoum Kurds may hold a taaref, which is a document issued by the local Mokhtar to function as basic proof of identity for individuals who are not citizens of Syria.60 In many cases stateless Kurds – Maktoum in particular – do not have any documents. Palestinians in Syria are issued other documents, including a Palestinian travel document: a document issued by the Syrian authorities to Palestinians who habitually reside on the territory, in lieu of a national passport, but not denoting nationality. 2.2 THE SITUATION IN REFUGEE-HOSTING COUNTRIES At the time of this research, there were around 4.8 million UNHCR registered refugees from Syria living in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt (see table below). The total number of refugees displaced by the Syrian conflict in the region is likely to be higher, as not all refugees have registered with UNHCR or with the host governments. In Lebanon, for instance, while just over 1 million refugees are registered with UNHCR, it has been estimated that the number may be closer to 1.5 million.61 56 57 58 59 60 61 20 RESEARCH REPORT Immigration and Refugee Board in Canada, Responses to information requests, 2013, available at https:// www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/pages/attachments/2016/02/02/syr104456.e.pdf Humanitarian Situation Overview in Syria (HSOS), Protection Factsheet (draft), April 2016. UNHCR, Addressing Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, supra n14, page 11. Interview with Noor, Irbid Jordan, July 2016. See also the Glossary of Key Terms. Estimated arrivals December 2015 (as of 8 September 2016). Data from Syria Refugee Response Inter-Agency Information Sharing Portal, ‘Lebanon’, available at: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/ country.php?id=122.