The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli-V1.3 Statelessness has a devastating impact on a person’s daily life and state of mind. It is a source of embarrassment and perceived exclusion and drives people to fraud and mediation (wasta) in order to get basic access to healthcare. It hinders their access to education and the job market and deprives them of their right to own property. It also restricts their mobility rights — even within the city — giving a final blow to their ultimate personal freedom: the right to be somewhere else. The first step towards giving them the means to escape this vicious cycle of exclusion lies in unifying stateless identification cards and enforcing the current Laissez-passer travel document as the only recognizable form. Through inter-ministerial collaboration between the Ministries of Interior, Labor, Health, Education, and Social Affairs, this document can be recast into a “stateless card” that recognizes their basic civil, economic and social rights. This regulation is intended to be an interim protection arrangement, pending the more permanent solutions. Develop Mukhtar oversight, transparency and accountability through the Ministry of Interior, providing proper training on dealing with statelessness. In addition to their obvious administrative role, Tripoli’s Mukhtars are the main source of information for the stateless people as they provide them with advice on legal procedures and practical steps, despite a relative lack of trust from the latter. The relationship between both parties appears to be mostly transactional, with the Mukhtars helping the stateless when and if there is a gain to be made. Also, this relationship is sometimes characterized by fraud with some Mukhtars developing a “specialty” in statelessness affairs. Others either refuse to deal with the issue altogether, considering it a waste of time, or do not demonstrate any interest in helping the stateless, considering them all as non-Lebanese. Oversight and transparency will invigorate the function of Mukhtars and leverage their local presence. Introduce a rights-based approach to managing statelessness and stateless individuals within the criminal justice system in order to decrease criminality and enhance community integration. Initiating the above mechanisms will help defuse violence and community tensions thereby reducing risks of radicalization. Results of this study show that the current status quo is breeding alienation, discrimination and violent behaviour in Tripoli. The higher the number of stateless persons in one family, the higher the marginalization and sense of deprivation of basic rights, the bigger the temptation for fraudulent behaviour as coping mechanism and the greater the likelihood of violence. Limited mobility and low trust in the State, mainly due to a lack of access to public services, also increase the likelihood of violence. The over-incarceration of stateless individuals exacerbates these issues. Results suggest that when stateless individuals are arrested and incarcerated, they are often mistreated and humiliated by prison officers because they are stateless. This last finding emphasizes the importance of further training and development regarding the issue within the Internal Security Forces, in line with their mission of delivering a pioneering police service that “promotes trust, respect human rights and safeguards freedoms”, a pledge of particular importance for a vulnerable group such as the stateless. 8