FRONTIERS RIGHTS SEEKING NATIONALITY THE JUDICIAL ODYSSEY OF APPLICANTS of the General Security is reducing the cost of the regularization for humanitarian reasons, if the applicant submits a plea requesting the reduction of the penalty, is providing “post marriage” prior approval for the marriage to facilitate the completion of the proof of marriage before the religious courts and later with the civil administration. Stateless children born to non-Lebanese parents A number of children born in Lebanon to foreign parents whose marriage is not registered with their country-of-origin authorities either because they have broken all ties with their country, or from evading the enlistment of their children in military service.17 ¬ There are also stateless children born out of temporary cohabitation/ marriages that resulted with the birth of a child and the man abandons the woman and children without registering the marriage or the births of his children in his country. ¬ There are also certain cases of stateless children born to foreign parents resulting from the failure to register them in the Register of Foreigners due to their parents’ illegal residency in Lebanon – these include female domestic workers and foreign fathers. This ultimately leads to their inability to acquire the nationality of their country-oforigin, in accordance with the provisions of the Private International Law that requires registering a birth in the country where it occurred and report it to the competent foreign authorities, as a first step towards granting the newborn the nationality of his country. What is of great concern is the category of foreign women – mainly female domestic workers – who have unregistered marriages and/or unregistered children in Lebanon. These women are deported as a result of their illegal residency, which leads to complications and negatively affects the process of registering the children left behind in Lebanon. marriages. The court’s decision is binding on the administration to execute it. The gender discrimination is obvious here. In Lebanon Considering that today only the Lebanese “Maktoumi male gives his Lebanese nationality to his alQayd” are children, such marriages can be registered children born by court order, a Lebanese woman married to a stateless man cannot register to Lebanese her marriage neither administratively registered nor through the judiciary. The pseudo parents or argument given by the officials is that the grandparents State fears that the court confirmation but their birth of her marriage to a stateless person or the birth of her children may acquire the Lebanese nationality on jus soli grounds. their fathers is not registered. ¬ Many stateless children were minors when their parents were naturalized as single persons while they were married. ¬ Some stateless children are born out of wedlock to a Lebanese parent. Many parents do not know that they can register automatically the birth of their new born child with the Administration on the condition that one parent acknowledges affiliation. Further, some parents are aware but refuse to acknowledge the new born child from fear of social “scandal” and from being out-casted from their family. ¬ Children can also become stateless when born out of unregistered marriage between a Muslim Lebanese man and a foreign woman living in Lebanon without legal residency permits.13 To register such marriages with the civil administration legal residency14 and a prior approval of the Directorate General of the General Security to marry a foreign woman are prerequisites.15 In practice, the prior approval of the General Security is being applied unlawfully to Christian men married to foreign women. While these rules and regulations are known to the religious authorities, Muslim sheikhs are concluding such marriages with complete disregard to these rules. As such, the concerned persons find themselves in more complex and complicated path to later validate and register their marriages, and the birth of their children thereafter, among them, is the wife’s high and unaffordable residency regularization penalty, especially if the wife has been residing illegally for many years.16 Today, the Directorate General SEEKING NATIONALITY | PART 1 ¬ 30