Nationality and Cases of Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa statelessness is adim aljinsiya.16 It is also the wording used in, for example, article 7(2) of the Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam. This translates to “lacking nationality” and is a literal description of what statelessness is, rather than a stand-alone legal concept that is uniformly utilised across the Arab world. As such, this phrase can be traced in nationality legislation in the MENA region – such as in article 8 of the Tunisian nationality law which grants nationality to a person born in the country whose parents are adim aljinsiya. Nevertheless, it is not very common in domestic law. Instead, the predominant translation for statelessness in nationality laws in the region is la jinsiya laho, which is similarly a description of the phenomenon as opposed to a distinct legal term: it simply means “does not have a nationality”. This can be found, for instance, in article 3(4) of the Jordanian nationality law which provides for conferral of nationality from a Jordanian mother to her child if the child’s father is la jinsiya laho and in article 3(c) of the Syrian nationality law which grants nationality 16 - See, for instance, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, List of issues in response to the second periodic report of Kuwait, CRC/C/KWT/Q/2, 10 May 2013, available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/docs/ AdvanceVersions/CRC-C-KWT-Q-2_ar.doc; UN Report, The Excluded, 2007, available at: http://www.un.org/arabic/events/tenstories/2007/theexcluded. shtml; Frontiers Ruwad, Invisible citizens. A legal study of statelessness in Lebanon, 2009, available at: http://www.frontiersruwad.org/pdf/FR_Stateless_BOOK_ Arabic_2010.pdf. 20