Report on Citizenship Law: Syria Also, another challenge is when an individual reaches a country of asylum and there is unable to identify and clarify their status, where they are from or who their family members are.28 Added to this, the conflict has brought about new cases and risks of statelessness, particularly for children born to displaced parents. There are substantial numbers of children born to Syrian refugee families over the last decade across the Middle East and elsewhere, where children might not be able to access another nationality. Therefore, there are now considerable risks of statelessness among the Syrian community in exile. Syria’s nationality law, which stipulates that mothers can only pass on their citizenship when the child is born on Syrian territory, is the main reason behind this. For the tens of thousands of female-headed households where, for any number of reasons due to the conflict there is no legal link to the father (father’s death, disappearance, displacement, etc.), this means that the children will obtain no citizenship. In female-headed households – which make up approximately a quarter of Syrian refugee households – if the authorities demand the presence of or proof of the identity of the father it may not be available. Also, children born within child marriages – which has unfortunately been a significant phenomenon for displaced families – are among those least likely to have their births registered, since in host countries these marriages are illegal and so would not have been officially registered.29 There are also challenges to families who are displaced in accessing documentation that would help them clarify their status later.30 Furthermore, safeguards in the law against a child being born stateless (including where the parents are unknown) are limited exclusively to children born within the Syrian territory, so would not be relevant to the millions of refugees. The risks of statelessness among the generation born during the conflict has been described as a ‘ticking timebomb’ by UN representatives and is likely to represent a major challenge for decades to come.31 Furthermore, an additional challenge is that many areas had been outside of the Syrian regime control for many years, and some remain so. Therefore, the legacy of non-state armed actor control – and, with that, thst consistently changing governance systems – has meant that there are many new challenges related to the legal nationality or statelessness for children born in Syria. Obtaining documentation from these areas was often very difficult or impossible, and documents from these regimes – particularly those from the Islamic State (IS) – were not recognised anyway. The inability of many families to prove marriages, births and other vital events places added challenges in confirming nationality. This section has highlighted how the multitude of reasons why citizenship issues are often challenging in Syria, including the often-intersectional discriminatory relationship that the country has had in relation to who does and who does not qualify to be a Syrian citizen. Although the official number of stateless persons inside of Syria may well have decreased over the last decade because of displacement outside of the country and because of the 2011 decree, statelessness stemming from Syria is increasing because of the new nuances and 28 For more information on the problem Syrian stateless persons face when in Europe see ENS, 2019, Stateless Journeys, Addressing Statelessness in Europe’s Refugee Response, access at: https://statelessjourneys.org/wpcontent/uploads/StatelessJourneys-Addressing_statelessness_in_Europ_refugee_response-FINAL.pdf. 29 For more information on the challenges the conflict has created with regards to statelessness, see ISI, NRC, 2016, Understanding Statelessness in The Syria Refugee Context, access at: http://www.syrianationality.org/pdf/report.pdf. 30 Ibid. 31 M. Fleming, The Situation in Syria is only going to get worse…and here’s why. The Guardian (16 February 2015), access at: http://www.theguardian.com/global-developmentprofessionals-network/2015/feb/16/situationsyria-isgoing-to-get-worse-melissa-fleming-united-nations. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2021/15 - © 2021 Author(s) 7