Article E. I found a country, but lost my brother - Stateless activist By EMMA BATHA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) Monday, 7 October 2019 ‘For most people a passport is a travel document, butfor me it means everything. It means I exist. It’s finally a sign I belong somewhere.’ As a teenager growing up in Lebanon Maha Mamo lived in constant terror of checkpoints, but her only crime was to be born stateless. With no documents to prove who she was, Mamo feared she could be arrested and locked up indefinitely. Like other stateless people, she was deprived of basic rights most people take for granted. Everything from going to school or getting a job to even enjoying a night out with friends was fraught with difficulties. On Monday, Mamo will tell her story to film star Cate Blanchett at the opening of a major intergovernmental meeting on statelessness in Geneva. Charismatic, down-to-earth and fluent in five languages, Mamo has become a powerful voice in #Ibelong, a campaign to eradicate statelessness which is estimated to affect about 10 million people worldwide. Stateless activist Maha Mamo is photographed after receiving Brazilian citizenship on October 4, 2018, at an event hosted by the UNHCR in Geneva. UNHCR/Susan Hopper “For most people a passport is a travel document, but for me it means everything,” said Mamo, who became a Brazilian national last year and now speaks at international events draped in a Brazilian flag. “It means I exist. It’s finally a sign I belong somewhere.” MASSIVE IMPACT Mamo’s fate was sealed before she was born when her Christian father and Muslim mother fell in love in Syria. Interfaith marriages were banned so they eloped to neighbouring Lebanon where she, her sister Souad and brother Eddy were born. “You can only be Lebanese if your father is Lebanese, and we couldn’t be Syrian because our parents’ marriage was illegal, so we grew up stateless,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It has had a massive impact all my life. I had many challenges every day. I was afraid of every single thing.” Mamo was rejected by many schools before eventually being accepted by an Armenian school which took pity on the family. Activist Maha Mamo (R), who spent 30 years as a stateless person, is pictured with her brother Eddy and sister Souad. Photo supplied by Maha Mamo 85