SEEKING NATIONALITY THE JUDICIAL ODYSSEY OF APPLICANTS Country of Birth The vast majority of stateless individuals were born in Lebanon and have been permanently residing on Lebanese territories Table 8 Distribution by Country of Birth Country of Birth Number Percentage 3065 97.55% Syria 56 1.78% Other 21 0.67% Total 3142 100% Lebanon Nationality of the Mother More than half of the individuals in the sample are born to a Lebanese mother or Lebanese by naturalization, and more than one-third are born to a mother who is stateless but who has Lebanese parents. Table 9 Distribution by the Nationality of the Mother Nationality of the Mother Number Percentage Lebanese 1348 42.90 Unregistered (Maktoumat alQayd) 1043 33.20% Lebanese by naturalization 424 13.49% Syrian 227 7.22% Other foreign nationality 46 1.46% Under-study nationality 29 0.92% Palestinian 13 0.41% No answer 12 0.38% 3142 100% Total HISTORICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE CAUSES OF STATELESSNESS ADMINISTRATIVE CAUSES Stateless children born to Lebanese parents There are children born to Lebanese registered parents or grandparents but their birth or the birth of their fathers is not registered. In Lebanon, they are known as “Maktoumi alQayd”. The statelessness of these children can be ended by submitted late birth registration lawsuits before the Single Judge requesting a ruling to register birth in the parents’ personal status civil records The reasons parents fail to register the birth of their new-born is due to a multiple and different reasons. For example: ¬ Parents fail to register the birth of their new born baby within the legal one-year delay as they may not be aware of this legal provision. ¬ Some parents are unaware of the personal status civil registration of events procedures. They often rely on the Mukhtar (local representative) to handle the procedures to discover later that latter did not complete the process on time, or did not do it at all. ¬ Others think that the fee for birth registration is unaffordable. This is sometimes due to the “unofficial exaggerated fees” demanded by the Mukhtar or the civil servant’s clerk to perform the registration. ¬ Some parents are content to be married religiously and do not register their marriage with the civil administration. They do not know that registration of their marriage with the civil administration is a prerequisite to register the birth of their children. ¬ Some children are born to religiously mixed married couple and such marriages are not valid marriages such as a Christian married man converts to Islam and marries a Muslim woman while still married to his first Christian wife. The second marriage cannot be registered as it is invalid according to the Christian religion that prohibits polygyny. ¬ Other children are born to a Lebanese man married religiously to a stateless woman and their marriage is not registered. Such marriages cannot today be registered automatically with the competent civil authorities and the couple are not aware that they can submit a lawsuit against the State and obtain a court decision confirming their SEEKING NATIONALITY | PART 1 FRONTIERS RIGHTS 28