54 OWNERSHIP: LIMITED OPPORTUNITIES As undocumented persons, stateless individuals cannot own nor register any type of property. However, a significant part of the community have settled on communal or collective land, according to customary land rights. That said, the majority managed to register property through proxies. Most stateless respondents do not own any property, with 79% in Greater Beirut and 73% in Mount Lebanon. Box 16. Property rights in Lebanon Among those who stated owning property items, the majority mention real estate assets such as houses or land, with smaller proportions for vehicles. Decree 11614 issued on 4 January 1969 on Acquisition of Real Property Rights for Non-Lebanese, forbids “any person who does not hold a nationality issued by a recognized country” to own any real estate (article 1). When asked whether such property was actually formerly registered, 18% of stateless respondents claim the item is actually registered in their own names, knowing that under-study cases have the right to register only movable goods. Mainly, stateless persons actually resort to proxy measures such as registering the item under a relatives’ name (65%), which appear as the most common coping mechanism on such matters for stateless communities across the different mapping efforts conducted so far. 17% of respondents who own some kind of property stated having no papers in relation to this item whatsoever. 21% of stateless in Greater Beirut own at least one property. 26% of stateless in Mount Lebanon own at least one property. 18% claim to have registered the property in their own name. 16% have nonregistered properties, including machaa’. Yet, stateless respondents indicate “owning properties” when referring to squatted settlements, despite the fact that unauthorized occupation of registered property, private or public, does not grant the occupant any property rights whatsoever, no matter for how long the settlement lasted. That said, the Lebanese context recognizes “customary land rights”, known as machaa’ (communal or collective), referring to the “enjoyment of some use of land that arises through customary, unwritten practice rather than through written codified law”1. As de facto custodians of these unregistered parcels, stateless communities manage to escape the legal grip regulating State public property (Decree no. 144 of June 10th, 1925) and State private property (Decree no. 275 of 25 May 1926). Moreover, while Lebanese law does not recognize “squatter’s rights”, Lebanese courts have been relatively tolerant of such occupation in cases of “extreme need”2, such as may be expected in the case of stateless. 1. UN Habitat (2022), Legislative and administrative land and property rights framework. Lebanon, p. 18. UN Habitat, UNHCR (2014). Housing, Land & Property Issues in Lebanon, Implications of the Syrian Refugee Crisis, August 2014, p. 25. 2. Ruwad Frontiers (2011). Invisible Citizens, a legal and policy study on statelessness in Lebanon, p.50. © 2023 Siren Associates. All Rights Reserved.