UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS IN THE SYRIA REFUGEE CONTEXT  of unregistered children of 9 months old and above might receive additional paralegal assistance or legal representation in order to register before the deadline. At the same time, ICLA is training humanitarian partners and local communities on identification and referral, which includes sensitisation to deadlines in the procedure. 4.1.2 CHILDREN BORN WITHIN FEMALE-HEADED HOUSE-HOLDS OR WHERE THE FATHER IS NOT LEGALLY PRESENT Syria’s nationality law is based on paternal jus sanguinis; only a Syrian man can transfer nationality to his child.176 The displacement of millions of Syrians has meant that this discriminatory law is playing an even more active role in putting new–born children at risk of statelessness. Across the region, men may have been killed or separated from their families, remained in Syria, have disappeared, are unknown, or have moved on to a third country. In the region, 75% of refugees from Syria are women and children;177 and UNHCR reports that an average of one in four Syrian refugee households are headed by women, with no man present.178 In these households, women have become the main income providers, and are responsible for ensuring the family remains documented. There are a number of scenarios resulting from these facts in which children face varying degrees of risk. For instance, a child of a Syrian refugee mother and an unknown father will likely find that he or she has no access to Syrian nationality and is stateless as a result.179 A child born to a Syrian mother and father, who remain unmarried or have never formalised their marriage and where the father is absent from the household, will have great difficulty establishing legal paternity and this may lead to an inability to be recognised as a Syrian national.180 On the other hand, if the couple is married and this has been registered, but the marriage certificate has been lost or left behind during displacement, it may be possible to re-certify the marriage through witness testimony in the host country and for this to enable the registration of a child such that legal paternity is recognised. Much will therefore depend on the specific circumstances of the case as well as which host State the family finds itself in, but the sub-set of the refugee population which is comprised of female-headed households is an important target group for more activities to protect the right to Syrian nationality. Hassan was born in Dohuk in 2013, to a Syrian mother and a father who has been missing in Syria since 2012. His mother brought no documents from Syria so cannot prove the marriage to her husband. She has registered Hassan’s birth, and has obtained a birth certificate, which it is possible to do in Dohuk without putting the name of the father on the certificate. However, this complicates the establishment of Hassan’s nationality as he has nothing to prove that he has a Syrian father. His mother hopes that she will find her husband, or witnesses to her marriage, or her documents. But, until then, Hassan remains with limited evidence of the legal link to his Syrian father.181 176 Under Syrian law, there are certain circumstances where a woman can transfer their nationality, such as when the father is unknown, but this is rarely implemented and the child must have been born on Syrian territory. 177 UNHCR data, ‘Syrian Refugees’, available at: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/syria.php. 178 UNHCR, Addressing Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, supra n14, page 10. See also, for more detail on Lebanon, Amnesty International, Lebanon: Refugee women from Syria face heightened risk of exploitation and sexual harassment, Press Release, 2 February 2016, available at: https://www. amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2016/02/lebanon-refugee-women-from-syria-face-heightened-risk-ofexploitation-and-sexual-harassment. In KRI, this issue is less pervasive, with 4% of refugee households being female-headed. Information from UNHCR, Erbil KRI. 179 They would fall into the category of stateless refugees, discussed in chapter 5. 180 This problem can be compounded by other factors relating to the birth of children out of wedlock. In Jordan, for instance, it is a crime to have a child outside of marriage and therefore registering a child only under the mother’s name is in itself nearly impossible. There are certain provisions in Jordan’s Civil Status Law of 2001 that provide for registering children born out of wedlock. In practical terms, the main obstacles are social repercussions rather than legal ones. Legal repercussions require a private complaint of adultery lodged with the authorities by one of the concerned parties (usually their family). See also more generally on this issue B. Fisher, ‘Why nonmarital children in the MENA region face a risk of statelessness’ in Harvard Human Rights Journal Online, 2015, available at: http://harvardhrj.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Fisher_HRJ_01-05-15.pdf. 181 Interview with Khaldiya, Duhok KRI, July 2016. RESEARCH REPORT 37