The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli-V1.3
Figure 8-Stateless demographic projection
Causes of Statelessness
The type of statelessness we are dealing with is important to assess as the cases of nonregistered individuals of Lebanese fathers are much easier to resolve than the cases of Maktoum
Al Qayd whose father is of unknown origins. The fieldwork reveals that two thirds of the stateless
people in Tripoli already have a Lebanese father, which means that most of the cases are people
who should have no serious problem regularising their case.
Sixty-three percent of the respondents are non-registered stateless individuals born to a
Lebanese father.47 A third of these non-registered cases (33%) are due to family problems and
more particularly the non-registration of their parents’ marriages. Such respondents have
explained that this is often due to the fact that marriage registrations of stateless women and
Lebanese men are much more complex and costly, if not impossible, which hinders parents’ ability
to register children’s births. Other non-registered cases are due to parents’ negligence (30%) and
financial problems (11%). 75% of the stateless have a Lebanese mother and 55% have both,
Lebanese father and mother.
•67% have Lebanese father
•75% have a Lebanese mother
•55% have a Lebanese father and a Lebanese mother
•28% have Lebanese siblings
•43% have Lebanese spouse
•Among those who have kids, 24% have Lebanese nationality
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Stateless persons currently living in Tripoli are distributed as follow: 63% of non-registered, 22% of
Maktoum Al Qayd and 9% of under-study. Another 5% were rendered stateless for other reasons such as
lost or damaged registries and being born to unknown parents.
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