 UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS IN THE SYRIA REFUGEE CONTEXT which aim to strengthen efforts to protect Syrian refugees’ right to Syrian nationality will need to make key information accessible, including in terms of: language (non-technical and with an Arabic version), functionality (short texts, supporting graphics, quick and easy to navigate) and availability (accessible online and in a mobile-friendly format). As different actors continue to implement a range of activities to facilitate, for instance, timely birth registration, it is also important to generate efficiency savings by sharing information about what works well (and what does not), so good-practice based tools will also be valuable. 6.2 PERSONS AT HEIGHTENED RISK OF STATELESSNESS Within any given (refugee) population, some people can be identified as facing a heightened risk of statelessness due to their circumstances and the social, political or legal context. Ensuring that they are not left stateless can require tailored prevention activities. Six so-called ‘heightenedrisk’ profiles were identified and explored within this research, as set out in chapter 4: 1. Children whose birth in the host State is not registered by the statutory deadline 2. Children born within female-headed households 3. Children born within child marriages 4. Undocumented refugees 5. Refugees not registered with UNHCR 6. Maktoum refugees The situation of these refugees was found to demand special attention due to a combination of the law and policy context in Syria and that of the host countries. A central problem is that gender discrimination in the Syrian nationality law means that children can only acquire nationality through paternal descent (i.e. through the father, but not mother). Although the law provides for nationality to be conferred when the Syrian father is absent, missing or deceased, if there is no legal proof that he was the father, the child may face difficulties being recognised as a national. For this reason, extra care must be taken to ensure that children can establish their link to their father. Birth registration is particularly important in this context, but may be a challenge in the case of female-headed households as civil registration officials may demand the presence of or to see documentation from the father in order to process the registration. It can also be more difficult to register the birth or a child in the absence of a marriage certificate and the marriage certificate may be needed to prove who a child’s legal father is. Lack of marriage certificates is therefore a particular – and persistent – problem for the refugee population generally and a particularly intractable one in the context of child marriages where marriage registration itself may not be possible (as the marriage is illegal). While the category of “children whose birth in the host State is not registered by the statutory deadline” is a much broader one and may affect a cross-section of refugees for a variety of underlying reasons, the result of this lack of registration is a situation similar to the other two groups: it becomes much harder to obtain proof of birth and of that vital connection to a Syrian father. The complexity of late registration procedures in the host countries is such that specialist assistance is often required for a refugee family to complete the process successfully. The other three refugee profiles discussed also face a heightened risk of statelessness due to potential difficulties in proving their link with Syria and their Syrian nationality. Due to interrupted access to documents, or the loss of documents due to the conflict/during flight, some refugees from Syria are undocumented when they leave the country. Refugees who are not registered with UNHCR miss out on the record that this creates of their displacement from Syria and means that the paper trail which UNHCR helps to create of a refugees’ identity and origins (including by copying or scanning vital documents) is not generated. Individuals referred to as Maktoum were never registered in the civil registry in Syria and so have no official proof of their existence. They may struggle to obtain any identity documents from the Syrian authorities and are likely to face the greatest difficulties in being recognised as Syrian nationals. In all of these cases, the challenges relate primarily to civil registration and documentation procedures. There is often a cyclical nature to the problem: lack of one document obstructing 56 RESEARCH REPORT