Syrian Citizenship Disappeared tion.64 The report reveals that among families, brothers presenting the same situation ended up being classified differently, or that families paying bribes were able to influence the fate of their situation.65 With only a few exceptions, the census resulted in only Kurds being deprived of their nationality, reinforcing the discriminatory and arbitrary character of the policy.66 15.1.2 Nationality as a prerequisite to claim human rights Although international human rights are theoretically universal, states implement these civil, political, economical, cultural and social rights, and most of the time decide to limit their benefit to their citizens. Thus, French law reserves the right to vote to French nationals over 18. But while being a foreigner can impact one’s exercise of their theoretically universal human rights, being deprived of any citizenship, and documentation, goes beyond this point, and threatens the mere existence of stateless. The inability to prove one’s identity impacts every aspect of stateless people’s life, from their childhood to their right to transmit their land and property to their heirs. Nationality is therefore an elementary prerequisite for rights holders to exercise their human rights, leaving stateless people unable to enjoy them.67 As such, the right to a nationality can be understood as the essential rights among all. Our study explores this aspect of statelessness, and reveals how the lack of nationality prevents rights holders from exercising their rights at all stage of life. From an early age, children in school are discriminated on the basis of their statelessness, resulting in the denial of 64 Zahra Albarazi, The Stateless Syrians (Tilburg: Tilburg Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series, 2013) 65 Syria: the silenced Kurds. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996, accessed September 2018. https://www.hrw.org/ sites/default/files/reports/SYRIA96.pdf 66 Stateless Kurds in Syria: Illegal invaders or victims of a nationalistic policy?. Berlin: European Center for Kurdish Studies, 2010, accessed September 2018. http://www.kurdwatch.org/pdf/kurdwatch_staatenlose_en.pdf 67 Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013) 22 their right to an education. Later, stateless are prevented from exercising the profession they would aspire to. Deprived of their nationality, they cannot endorse public functions, and denied the certification of classes they have nonetheless pursued, they cannot access positions in their field. Their right to property is also denied, as well as the right to travel and exercise political rights such as voting or being elected. Ultimately, not only are the rights of stateless people violated, but also their mere participation in the society jeopardised by their status. The 2011 Decree No. 49 aims at granting the nationality to stateless, but none of the texts, annexes or commentaries indicates any form of financial or moral reparation for the people harmed between 1962 and 2011, or mentions any procedure that the Syrian Kurds, either ajanib or maktumeen, could refer to in their countries of asylum, in case they wished to resolve their legal status. Tens of thousands of maktumeen and ajanib have migrated to several countries seeking better lives, and have encountered difficulties when it came to proving their legal affiliation to Syria. Maktumeen, however, remained the most aggrieved, tens of thousands of them still being deprived of their Syrian nationality. 15.2. A Glimpse of the Rights Which the Stateless Are Deprived of Unlike citizens enjoying Syrian nationality, Kurds who were stripped of their citizenship under the 1962 special census, have been deprived of their basic civil, political, social, and economic rights. Some of them lived and died stateless, in the absence of any birth or death certificate acknowledging their existence. For Ashraf Sino, lawyer, the most accurate denomination is “the nationality-stripped