61 DEPENDING ON ASSISTANCE Despite being the most vulnerable, stateless persons often face significant challenges in accessing assistance and support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs), particularly in rural areas. Consequently, they tend to rely more on their local community’s solidarity for support. Stateless respondents expressed a genuine level of trust towards NGOs and CSOs (57%), a proportion higher than Lebanese respondents (48%). Yet, stateless communities in general do not appear as significant beneficiaries of support and aid programs of CSOs and NGOs in the country. Focus group discussions and fieldwork uncovered many situations where organizations would reduce their support to stateless persons after finding out about their condition. Some stateless also claimed that organizations would prefer to prioritize refugees, excluding them from their support programs. In parallel, stateless persons give greater importance to their local networks, considering their community among the top three choices of social belonging. In this respect, 79% of stateless respondents trust their local communities, while 22% would seek help from residents in their neighborhood in case of a medical emergency. On the other hand, stateless persons in Lebanon need special attention and support in terms of legal aid, given the complexity of the procedures pertaining to citizenship acquisition. In the last six months, only 4% of respondents had actually received legal aid from organizations, showing a clear gap in the coverage. Among respondents who had initiated such proceedings, one fifth did so through organizations such as Tahhadi, Jensiyati Karamati or Ruwad el Houkouk, mainly in urban areas among the informal settlements and Palestinian camps of Greater Beirut, with a poor outreach in rural areas. 8% of respondents tried in the past to acquire citizenship through an organization. 4% of respondents received legal help from an organization during the last 6 months. “ No one looks at us Lebanese stateless. For them, we don’t exist. We are unknown of this world. - Stateless woman, Focus group discussion © 2023 Siren Associates. All Rights Reserved.