immigration laws, or by an assortment of a hodgepodge solutions. In a limited number of states, there are policies which give benefits to some stateless groups; in the case of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, children born of non-citizen mothers are awarded residency and other benefits. Moreover, a number of MENA states have developed more focused, but overall ad hoc, policies towards certain population statelessness in their countries, thus permitting their protection status to be improved. When there is no status-determination procedure or any other special recognition of status, stateless people might not be able to receive identity documents that indicate their status, or might receive none at all. Detention, expulsion and denial of the right to go back to the place of origin are among the most basic protection problems. The issues mentioned are not very common in the news, but have been encountered by certain stateless people or groups in the different MENA countries on different occasions. Housing availability, chances to live a decent life, education, medical care, and enjoyment of family life are some more issues that the stateless people in Mauritania and Iraq face. These challenges are different across countries in terms of nature and the level of their manifestation. In other aspects, states have achieved much, Kuwait has also made efforts to facilitate the right to work by the Bidoon such as opening up careers that previously were not available to the Bidoon. Some Lebanese mayors have provided stateless children with special letters in order to enable their school admissions. In Bahrain where the citizens do not pay any government fees to seek medical care, attend school among other amenities, this has now been allowed to include stateless children. The international community is realizing the impacts of statelessness are devastating, and thus significance of its mitigation has been acknowledged. Being stateless may lead to negative impacts on both individuals, communities, states and even inter-state relationships. The international commitments and the constitutions of the countries of MENA are reflected in the promotion of individual rights and the equal opportunities to take part in the society including the right to a nationality. All the states of MENA are the members of the CRC, CEDAW and CERD. Their constitutions give guarantees as well that strengthen the determination to deal with statelessness. As an example, the constitution of Egypt does not allow any discrimination and provides the freedom of citizenship irrespective of religion. The new constitution of Iraq provides that the citizens cannot be deprived of citizenship on any ground and the same is provided in the constitution of Yemen as well. The principles of equality and non-discrimination, such as equality between the genders, are entrenched in Bahrain and Lebanon. These constitutional principles have been used in campaigns by civil-society to reform the citizenship laws and to allow women to confer citizenship on their children. Similar gender equality guarantees were added by the new constitutional amendments in Qatar. In this regard, defending people, encouraging equality, and avoiding statelessness are essential goals that are identified in the framework of the constitution of these territories. The laws on citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) demonstrate visible patterns in the development of regulations on citizenship acquisition and loss, and certain peculiarities in the country as well as throughout the region when compared to the other parts of the world. Although the eligibility criteria differ (say, in length of residence needed to become a citizen there are considerable variations among the MENA states regarding this aspect), most of them share similar requirements with respect to language proficiency, good character, income, and physical/mental health. The other similarity among the MENA region is that majority of countries have a strong control over loss and revocation of citizenship. MENA states may revoke citizenship based on a wide range of reasons, the most common of them being the commission of an act or crime that endangers state security, service to a foreign state, or fraudulent acquisition of citizenship, except in Lebanon where the reasons include a limited number of grounds, which include a threat to the state security, and the provision of services to a foreign state. Another trend is that citizenship obtained through the naturalization process is much more fragile, more prone to the loss or deprivation, as compared to citizenship obtained at birth. ISSN 2776-1266 (print), 2776-1266 (online) Copyright © 2026, Journal of Public Representative and Society Provision Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0 | 191