Zahra Albarazi • 5 years of residency, • absence of a criminal record, • knowledge of Arabic, • no contagious diseases and sound mind, • a profession or sufficient means of income.33 The requirement of five years of residence is problematic, because the legislation shows that that precludes a legal status and given that many stateless persons have not been able to obtain legal residence they therefore cannot qualify for naturalisation. A further problem in this law is the requirement for an individual to have no contagious diseases and be of a sound mind. The prohibition of individuals suffering from physical or mental disabilities in accessing nationality is clearly a significant flaw in the law and may leave particularly vulnerable persons at risk of being stateless, although no data of this (lack of?) implementation is available. It is important to note that, additionally, there are no facilitated procedures for naturalisation for those who are stateless (as well as no mechanism to determine the statelessness of anyone). However, there is another form of facilitation, that of those of Arab origin. Syrian nationality law clearly distinguishes people into three categories: Syrians, Arabs, and foreigners. There are significant differences in access to nationality stipulated by law between individuals who are of Arab origin and non-Arabs in Article 6. This article of the nationality code is dedicated to “special provisions for other Arab nationals”, where facilitated naturalisation is offered to people who are nationals of other Arab countries. Article 6 of the Law states that the Minister of Interior can, at his discretion: waive regular conditions when the applicant: • has a certificate of a Syrian émigré citizen, • performed excellent services to the State or the Arab nation, • and/or was of Arab origin and was able to provide a good reason for naturalisation. It is interesting to note here that naturalisation requirements are influenced in many ways by the importance attached to unifying Arabs under pan-Arab ideology. Although this type of acceleration may be seen as justified consistent with political thought dominant in the Arab region, the worry is that giving facilitation to someone who has or had an affiliation with an Arab country, and potentially no direct connections to Syria, whilst excluding the non-Arab sections of the population, is troubling. In practice this can exclude people who have a significant connection to Syria and may perpetuate discrimination on an ethnic basis. 3.2 Gender discrimination The Syrian constitution grants full equality to women where Article 33 states that “Citizens are equal in rights and duties, without discrimination on grounds of sex, race, language, religion or creed” and Article 23 goes on to state that “The state guarantees women all 33 10 Article 4 of 276 nationality law. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2021/15 © 2021 Author(s)