 UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS IN THE SYRIA REFUGEE CONTEXT no, and perhaps never had, a nationality, and they are now displaced from the country which they called home. That a refugee is also stateless may not be immediately apparent or even easy to establish as he or she seeks assistance in the country of exile,9 but it is a relevant factor in the assessment of protection needs.10 The circumstances in which they lived prior to the conflict, the documents that they hold (or lack), the strategies that they adopt during displacement, their participation in community structures, their level of resilience or their level of trust in institutions – these may be influenced by their statelessness, which is in turn relevant to the question of how to ensure that they receive appropriate assistance in the host country. Furthermore, stateless refugee parents are not in a position to transmit a nationality to their children, so any children will likely also be stateless, unless they are born in a country that offers its nationality to children born there. Given the foregoing, it is important for actors engaged in the Syria refugee response to have an understanding of the interaction between the displacement prompted by the crisis in Syria, the challenges relating to the protection of the right to a nationality in a displacement context and the protection of stateless refugees. This is relevant not only to the current refugee response, but also to mitigate problems that could arise in the future in relation to, for instance, voluntary return to Syria when circumstances in the country allow.11 Efforts have already been made to draw attention to these issues, including assessments of the risk of statelessness among children of Syrian refugees in specific host countries,12 public awareness-raising of the challenges faced in protecting Syrian refugee children’s right to nationality13 and stock-taking of the progress achieved in addressing these challenges.14 A range of activities are being undertaken in host countries to promote access to civil registration and documentation as a means to provide and preserve critical evidence of refugees’ links to Syria.15 There have also been significant efforts by host governments to simplify or otherwise facilitate access to civil registration procedures for refugee families on their territory so that they can document their connection to Syria.16 All of these initiatives are having a real impact, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reporting in 2016 that in the Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) region, 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 12 RESEARCH REPORT As touched on above, to be stateless is distinct from the situation of being undocumented, i.e. having no proof of identity. In many cases, nationality is acquired automatically and a person can be considered a national even if they do not hold (certain forms of) documentation. The identification of cases of statelessness can therefore be challenging. This can also be complicated by factors such as the person’s own lack of awareness of their nationality status or unwillingness to self-identify as stateless. See further the Statelessness chapter in UNHCR, 2013 Statistical Yearbook, 2015, available at: http://www.unhcr. org/54cf99f29.html. NRC and Tilburg University, Statelessness and Displacement. Scoping Paper, supra n7, pages 24-26. See, for instance, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2015-2016, 2014, available at: https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/Syria/LCRP_document_ EN_26Mar2015.pdf. For instance, Refugees International, Birth registration in Turkey: Protecting the future for Syrian children, 2015, available at: http://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2015/6/13/birth-registration-inturkey-protecting-the-future-for-syrian-children; NRC and International Human Rights Clinic – Human Rights Programme at Harvard Law School (IHRC), Registering Rights: Syrian refugees and the documentation of births, marriages and deaths in Jordan, 2015, available at: http://hrp.law.harvard. edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Registering-rights-report-NRC-IHRC-October20151.pdf. UNHCR, Born in exile, Syrian children face threat of statelessness, 4 November 2014, available at: http:// www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2014/11/54589fb16/born-exile-syrian-children-face-threat-statelessness. html. UNHCR, In Search of Solutions: Addressing Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, 2016, available at: https://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=11762. These include law and policy reform initiatives, community outreach projects, legal counselling programmes and more. Ibid, pages 11-21. See also, for instance, the work of NRC’s Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) programme in Lebanon, including in NRC, Update on marriage registration for refugees from Syria, 2016, available at: https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/reports/ update-on-marriage-registration-for-refugees-from-syria.pdf; and NRC, Birth Registration Update: The challenges of birth registration in Lebanon for refugees from Syria, 2015, available at: https://www.nrc. no/globalassets/pdf/reports/the-challenges-of-birth-registration-in-lebanon-for-refugees-from-syria.pdf. UNHCR, Addressing Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, supra n14, pages 15-16.