Syrian Citizenship Disappeared 1. Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence. 2. Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own. 3. The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant. 4. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country. Article 12, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provide for the right to move both within and outside of one’s own country. Our study shows, however, that stateless people of Syria experience considerable hardship to travel, not only abroad, but also within Syria, from one governorate to another. When they attempt to do so, sometimes for urgent reasons such as hospitalisation, they face the refusal, mockery and harassment of law enforcement. Rashad Me’o, a carpenter, was born in Ras al-Ein/Sari Kani in 1980, and is now married with two children. He submitted his papers to the Personal Status Department and tried hard to resolve his and his children’s legal status, but in vain. “We faced many obstacles owing to our status and the most considerable one was when it came to travel, both abroad and within the borders of Syria. I married a woman with a Syrian nationality and had children. Once the children felt ill and I was forced to take them to Damascus and Aleppo for treatment. In order not to face problems at the checkpoints scattered throughout the country because I did not have an identity card, I borrowed my friend’s identity card who had a Syrian nationality. That was the way we managed our affairs.” In another testimony, Ma’mo Hasan Alo, who was born in Ras al-Ein/Sari Kani in 1978, described that his legal status as ajnabi exposed him to insults on several occasions when traveling within Syria: “In 2001, I travelled by bus from my city to Aleppo to go to college and on a bridge called Qaroqozat, some Syrian security officials stopped us, asking the passengers to show their identity cards. I was the only one who had the red card so one of them asked me to get off and they questioned me in their own room on the bridge. They beat me and insulted me although I assured them I wasn’t affiliated to any political parties. Then they kicked me and I continued my travel to university in Aleppo. That is just the tip of the iceberg.” ¹¹⁸ 5 Firas Salim Ali recalled an unforgettable incident he experienced owing to his legal status as maktum: “Once, shortly after the outbreak of war in Syria, a checkpoint officer asked to see my ID. When I showed him the identification certificate I hold, he contemptuously uttered that this was “for animals.” Nubar Ismael added that at the beginning of the Syrian conflict and with the spread of the checkpoints throughout the country, especially when he traveled to university located in Lattakia, he faced troubles and had to answer repeatively to the questions by the checkpoints’ officers. Most of them, clueless regarding the issue of statelessness, were surprised to see his identification certificate, and asked him if was is a foreigner. 118 STJ's field researcher conducted direct interview with him in Qamishli in March 2018 43