Nationality and Cases of Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa come to be known as the “Bidoon” and continue to live in and pass on their statelessness.73 2.3 Other pivotal events affecting the enjoyment of MENA countries’ nationality As the example of Lebanon illustrated, ensuring that the delineation of its original body of nationals by a state at the time of its formation or independence does not leave anyone stateless is a challenging but crucial first step to staving off problems in this area. Even if successful in this, statelessness may still arise as a result of the subsequent day to day operation of the rules regarding the acquisition and loss of nationality when there are insufficient safeguards in place. Such scenarios will be described from section 2 onwards when this chapter starts to explore the content of MENA’s nationality laws in detail. To complete the picture, it is necessary to acknowledge that nationality policy can also be subject to change, in accordance with political and societal developments. As such, new and potentially severe problems could arise at any time and indeed did in several MENA countries over the last half-century. 73 - See further chapter 3. 62