Report on Citizenship Law: Syria • citizens who reside in a non-Arab country for more than 3 years and who do not respond to requests for a justification of their absence, or provide an insufficient response, will have the nationality withdrawn. The first two provisions can be justified under international law as criteria under which a country can withdraw nationality.37 However, their possible abuse, and the content of the two remaining provisions, are very worrying in terms of arbitrary deprivation of nationality. The clauses have been formulated in a vague manner in order to leave room for discretionary interpretation by the state. Given the nature of Syria’s relationship with its citizenry, these are of particular concern because the provisions leave scope for them to be utilised for political reasons. It is not clear through existing research whether the provision of three years residency abroad has been implemented and/or to what extent. In addition, nothing in the nationality law takes into account whether a person would be rendered stateless by the implementation of any of the provisions and therefore creates a risk that someone will be left without any nationality. In addition to these provisions found in the nationality law, the president also has considerable power to deprive Syrians of their nationality. For example, it is documented how political dissidents who opposed the ruling Baath party in the 1960s and 1970s were arbitrarily deprived of their nationality by way of a presidential decree. This was done under the recommendation of the interior minister, and not through the nationality legislation. Through this decree, it was estimated that 27,000 people have had their nationality arbitrarily removed, and it is unknown how many were rendered stateless by this action.38 If these individuals were male and stateless this would also mean that their future children would also be unable to access Syrian nationality due to the paternal jus sanguinis system described above, creating more cases of intergenerational statelessness. It must be noted that there are also some positive components of the legislation. Firstly, there is no provision in the Syrian nationality law that allows for renunciation of Syrian nationality. In practice, this means that a Syrian national should not be able to render him or herself stateless through voluntary renunciation of citizenship. Also, when an individual has their nationality removed – under any of the provisions – the law states that the nationality of other family members is not affected – it only affects the targeted individual. 4. Current political debates and reform plans Unfortunately, the concept of who belongs to the Syrian citizenry has rarely been a topic for political discussion in Syria. Moreover, given the limited space for political discussion in the country issues around citizenship (e.g., the deprivation of nationality of the Kurds in the 1960s is not public knowledge) are often not well understood. Therefore, there has been very little debate – whether in the political or public sphere – with regards to the citizenry of the country or issues around citizenship management. However, one issue where there has been discussion about the need for reform or change has been with regards to the gender discriminatory elements of the law. Work on women’s rights has been one of the few segments of civil society in Syria that was allowed 37 38 According to the 1961 Stateless Convention on the Reduction of statelessness Arab Commission for Human Rights, 2004, access at http://hem.bredband.net/dccls2/r1.htm RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2021/15 - © 2021 Author(s) 13