2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(1) out in the MENA, and this focuses on only one governorate of Lebanon.24 Although the Syrian crisis has presented an opportunity for increased UNHCR birth registration work in the Levant, other interventions on identification, prevention and resolution of statelessness have been limited. Further, the MENA region is rich in cases of protracted and politically sensitive large-scale statelessness. The question of statelessness is particularly charged in countries with large numbers of Palestinian refugees (Lebanon, Jordan and Syria), where naturalisation has been perceived as jeopardising the Palestinians’ legitimate ‘right to return’ to their historic homeland and their self-determination as a people.25 Groups such as the Bidoon in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (‘UAE’) have a particularly liminal status because these governments have moved beyond designations such as ‘unknown nationality’ to record individuals as unlawfully present foreigners. In Kuwait, the authorities label the Bidoon as ‘illegal residents’ and the UAE administratively offloaded its stateless people by arranging passports of convenience for them, from the Union of the Comoros.26 The fact that, in many parts of the MENA region, statelessness is a widespread, multi-generational phenomenon cemented by discriminatory nationality laws has meant that incremental progress has been difficult to achieve. Although Zhao’s precedential interpretation of art 24(3) clearly applies to situations in the Arabian Gulf, where thousands of stateless Bidoon children are born and live with unknown nationality, the size of the population alone may limit the extent to which advocates can benefit from attempts to apply Zhao.27 Thus, the central challenge is how to extend the norm against childhood statelessness beyond contexts where statelessness is a relatively ‘episodic’ occurrence (rather than a systemic issue of large proportion). Another barrier is the existence of legal regimes of labour migration and capture of the legal system, which lead to difficulties in accessing meaningful legal aid. One example of a category of stateless persons who are overlooked due to the latter reason are the children of domestic workers. The experience of Denny Zhao and his mother in the Netherlands in part parallels that of children born to migrant domestic workers in MENA states. Such mothers can struggle to register the birth of the child, deterred by perceived risks of detention and deportation resulting from interactions with the authorities.28 However, the specific governmental framework covering migrant domestic work in these countries — known as the kafala (sponsorship) system — denies migrant domestic workers the basic protections that enable access to legal aid and potential judicial remedies. The 24 25 26 27 28 Siren Associates and UNHCR, Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Akkar (Report, September 2021) <https://sirenassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Mapping-andunderstanding-statelessness-in-Akkar-2021.pdf>. It should be noted that this study builds on the earlier mapping study undertaken by civil society actors, which resulted in the first MENA mapping report and focused on a single city: MARCH and SIREN, The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli (Report, March 2019) <https://sirenassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stateless-Report_Final-DraftMarch-10-1.pdf>. Francesca Albanese and Lex Takkenberg, Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford University Press 2020) 245–69. Zahra Albarazi and Yoana Kuzmova, ‘Trafficking in (Non)-Citizenship in Kuwait and the UAE’ in Roel Meijer, James N Sater and Zahra R Babar (eds), Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge 2020) 349. See, eg, Statelessness Journeys, Statelessness in Kuwait (Country Position Paper, May 2019) 6. See in the Lebanese context: Bina Fernandez, Thomas McGee, Zahra Albarazi, Deirdre Brennan and Karen Block, ‘At Risk of Statelessness: Children Born in Lebanon to Migrant Domestic Workers’ (forthcoming). 150