Jordan: Operational Response in Focus Jordan: Operational Response in Focus The specific context of Jordan provides a more indepth view of how one host country has developed a multi-sectoral, inter-agency strategy to register and document refugee children, with dedicated attention to finding solutions for children at heightened risk. Protecting Undocumented Refugee Children Born in Syria In Jordan, favourable solutions are actively sought to document and protect refugee children who were born in Syria, but who were neither registered at birth, nor issued any form of identity documentation prior to fleeing Syria. In 2015, UNHCR Jordan identified approximately 44,000 Syrian refugee children in the country in this situation. This number has been successfully reduced to 8,800 in 2016. The government’s prioritization of the issue allowed various agencies, experts and functions to work together to design complementary solutions. The government’s establishment of a Special Protection Committee on Complex Cases was a key step. After UNHCR refers undocumented Syrian refugee children to the Committee, they are issued an official identity document that includes the same data traditionally found on a birth certificate, such as the child’s age, identity and parentage. The government’s urban refugee verification exercise also increased access to documentation, including for Syrian refugee children who arrived in Jordan without birth certificates. By documenting Syrian refugee children now, Jordan is providing immediate protection of their legal identity and rights to family unity, while also laying the foundation for their future. In tandem with government efforts, UNHCR was able to secure durable solutions for undocumented Syrian children through targeted resettlement and family reunification initiatives. Safeguarding Family Unity and the Right of the Child to a Nationality The government of Jordan and UNHCR have also worked together to identify protection-sensitive approaches to mitigate the negative coping mechanisms some families may resort to when they lack basic identity documentation needed to register new births. Reportedly, some parents finding themselves in this situation have resorted to registering their own newborn children under the names of friends or relatives as a desperate attempt to provide the child with a legal existence. This approach raises a number of risks. Registering a child as belonging to another family can endanger the biological parents’ rights to child custody and the child’s right to know and be cared for by its parents. This can also jeopardise the child’s claim to nationality, as citizenship acquired by fraud is revocable under Syrian law.38 To resolve these risks, the Special Protection Committee on Complex Cases carries out careful verification of the actual parent-child relationship and issues official documentation to the concerned families that accurately reflects the child’s identity, age, biodata and parentage. 38 Articles 7 and 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child recognize, respectively, the right of the child “to know and be cared for by his or her parents” and to “not be separated from his or her parents against their will”. Nationality acquired by fraud is revocable under Article of Syria’s Nationality Law of 1969. See Legislative Decree 276 - Nationality Law [Syrian Arab Republic], 24 November 1969, at: http://www.refworld. org/docid/4d81e7b12.html. 20