9. Further, Syria received numerous UPR recommendations on gender equality and addressing
gender-based violence, including, inter alia, a recommendation from India during the third session
to “continue with policy and legislative measures for promoting gender equality and combating
gender-based discrimination”78 and, during the second session, from Nicaragua to “continue and
strengthen efforts in the fight for gender equality”79 and from Sierra Leone to “adopt national
legislation criminalizing domestic violence”.80 Syria accepted these recommendations.81
10. In 2019, the Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern regarding the right to a
nationality for children and women in Syria, recommending that Syria:
(a) Repeal all the legal provisions that discriminate against girls, such as those concerning unequal
inheritance rights, as well as provisions not allowing children to receive their mother’s nationality,
not allowing children born to unmarried parents to have their father’s name registered in civil
records, and establishing a different age of custody for girls and boys;
(…)
(a) Strengthen its efforts to re-establish civil affairs services throughout the territory, take into
account the difficulties faced by families currently or previously living in areas controlled by nonState actors in gaining access to official documentation, and consider recognizing documents
issued locally by mukhtars or sheikhs to facilitate the issuance of birth certificates;
(b) Consider waving fees for late birth registration, in particular among displaced families and
those living in areas newly under State control, and consider adopting temporary measures, such
as mobile teams to assist families in hard-to-reach areas, to promote and facilitate birth
registration;
(c) Review its legislation to implement gender-equitable measures regarding civil documentation
allowing women to be the legal guardians of their children and promptly adopt the draft
amendment to article 3 of the law on nationality allowing Syrian women to transmit nationality
to their children on an equal basis with Syrian men;
(d) Amend the Personal Status Code to ensure that children of Muslim mothers and non-Muslim
fathers, children born to unmarried parents and children born from situations of sexual violence
are recognized, registered and have access to birth registration documents;
(e) Consider ratifying the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.82
11. In 2014, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called on Syria to:
78
Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review on the Syrian Arab
Republic,’ A/HRC/50/6 (3rd cycle, 31 March 2022), Recommendation 133.85.
79
Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review on the Syrian Arab
Republic,’ A/HRC/34/5 (2nd cycle, 27 December 2016), Recommendation 109.86.
80
Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review on the Syrian Arab
Republic,’ A/HRC/34/5 (2nd cycle, 27 December 2016), Recommendation 109.15.
81
For a full list of recommendations relating to gender equality, see Annex 1.
82
Committee on the Rights of the Child, ‘Concluding Observations on the Fifth Periodic Report of the Syrian Arab
Republic,’ CRC/C/SYR/CO/5 (6 March 2019), para. 24.
17