reaching approximately 15,300 people in 2025.59 38. While some Palestinian refugees are able to access rights similar to those of Syrian citizens, this is determined by their legal classification within the country. Palestinian refugees fall under the mandate of UNRWA and are divided into two groups:60 those who arrived before 1956 (and their descendants), and those who arrived after 1956. The first group is registered with the General Authority for Palestinian and Arab Refugees (GAPAR), while the second group is not. Those registered with GAPAR benefit from Law No. 260 of October 1956, which grants them some rights such as labour, employment, and trade, while preserving their Palestinian nationality.61 However, they remain excluded from political participation, face restrictions on property ownership, and are not eligible for naturalisation. Palestinians not registered with GAPAR are treated as foreigners by Syrian authorities and have even more limited access to rights. Intersection with Gender Discrimination in the Nationality Law & Kurdish and Palestinian Stateless Populations 39. The large Syrian-Palestinian and Kurdish stateless populations combined with Syrian women’s inability to confer nationality on their children in all but the rarest circumstances, substantially increases the risk of statelessness to children born to Syrian national women and stateless men, both inside Syria and amongst refugees displaced from Syria. Recommendations 40. Based on the above information, the co-submitting organisations urge reviewing States to make the following recommendations to Syria: I. Amend the Syrian Nationality Law in accordance with Articles 10 and 21 of the 2025 Constitutional Declaration and Syria’s international obligations, to remove all genderdiscriminatory provisions and ensure that women and men have equal rights to confer nationality on their children, regardless of place of birth, and on their noncitizen spouse, and to acquire, change, and retain their nationality on an equal basis. II. Amend birth registration policies to enable parents the equal and autonomous right to access documentation for their children regardless of gender or marital status. III. Amend the Syrian Nationality Law to ensure that no child born in Syrian territory should be left stateless and, pending these reforms, implement without discrimination, existing statelessness safeguards, including Articles 3(b), 3(c), and 3(d) of the 1969 Nationality Act, to uphold the right to nationality and avoid multi-generational statelessness. IV. Ensure effective and timely implementation of Decree No 13’s provisions for stateless (maktumeen) Kurds to access Syrian citizenship and explore the introduction of a 59 https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/syria/yarmouk-unofficial-camp https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2269700_code797387.pdf?abstractid=2269700&mirid=1&ty pe=2 61 https://gapar.sy/?page_id=1173 60 12