The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli-V1.3 Recommendations This report has estimated 27,000 stateless persons in Lebanon and 2,200 in Tripoli. These individuals are caught in a vicious circle where lack of citizenship and poverty are mutually reinforcing. While the stateless do not always have a clear understanding of their rights and obligations, state institutions are adding opacity through complex procedures and unexplained bureaucratic delays. Registration procedures take decades at a time people are looking for short term economic survival and adaptation amid recession and a rampant refugee crisis. These procedures are also expensive. They require thousands of dollars from household that have an average income of a few hundred dollars. Moreover, stateless individuals are in a relative deprivation and discrimination situation with regards to all kinds of services including education, health, mobility, employment, and property ownership. This situation is in clear violation of Lebanon’s commitment to various international conventions and principles, mainly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It further encourages people to resort to fraud as a coping and survival mechanism. It makes them prone to antisocial behaviour and violence in a state where the memory of war is still fresh. Yet, 67% of stateless individuals are born of a registered Lebanese father and 70% are born of a registered Lebanese mother. All of them are born in Lebanon and most have long historical Lebanese roots. Most of them also have a strong sense of belonging to the Lebanese State. They have good reasons to hope. Many have attempted to resort to legal means to register themselves and their family and recover their right to have rights. They do have the will. These indicators reflect a clear opportunity for the state to bring the problem to an administrative and technical level and solve it through practical measures. Several initiatives can be taken to tackle the root causes through awareness, transparency, efficient processes, and diligent follow up. Those measures involve various public institutions including the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, General Security, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Labor. Civil society can support the project through awareness and provision of legal aid. The following recommendations outline these measures dividing them into four categories: detection, reduction, protection and prevention of stateless persons. They take into consideration previous experiences including the under-study classification, naturalisation decrees (1994 and others), and the latest nationality recuperation law. All these initiatives were highly political, this report is an attempt to bring the topic back to a technical level. General 1. Raise public awareness around the issue of statelessness of people in their own country and clearly separate it from refugee statelessness. 54