Syrian Citizenship Disappeared of the marriage. This helped to convert the legal status of originally makutmeen children into ajanib, a process denied before 2000. This is of utmost significance considering that the 2011 Decree No. 49 grants citizenship to the ajanib and excludes the maktumeen. Ouso explained that women carry a disproportionate burden in Syrian patriarchal society: “As part of the Syrian society, the Kurdish woman suffers the oppression and discrimination Syrian women suffer. Her misery doubles if she is stateless. The husband cannot pass on the property to the wife if she is maktumah or ajnabiyah. She’s therefore deprived of inheritance at his death. And when it comes to divorce, she is deprived of her rights such as an alimony and a dowry.” Mohammed Khalil adds that the deprivation of citizenship had a double impact on women. Indeed, Syrian law does not allow the mother to grant their citizenship to their children. As a consequence, except when the couple managed to get their marriage officially registered, as explained above, when the father is stateless, children remain maktumeen: “Under the Syrian law when it comes to marriage, the wife’s records is transferred to the husband. When the citizen woman marries a stateless, she remains officially single, and thus does not inherit her husband after his death and vice versa. Her children cannot inherit her either. When it comes to divorce, she is deprived of her rights such as an alimony, and can’t get her dowry back.” Prior to Decree No. 49 in 2011, Lukman Ayyanah, lawyer¹¹⁴, worked on lots of lawsuits related to the stateless and learned about their hardships: “The situation of ajnabi husband married to a citizen wife was tremendously complicated. The registration of children was done without the confirmation of marriage itself and the couples remained single in the civil records. The process was the same each time a new child was born. Some other hardships came up concerning education; the stateless graduated from the Faculty of Law were not entitled to join the Syrian Bar Association nor practice the law. Moreover, the maktumeen were denied obtaining high school diploma and enrolling at universities or institutions for decades. Add to that, the unemployment at public sector and all of that prompted thousands to leave for the interior provinces searching for better lives, others migrated to Kurdistan region and Europe.” 1 Khalil stated that couples facing the most difficulties were those wher the husband is ajnabi and the wife a citizen, who can encounter blackmail when attempting to confirm their marriage: “Over the decades following 1962, the couples, in case the husband was ajnabi and the wife a citizen, were not entitled the approval of the security apparatus to confirm the marriage and the children were therefore registered as maktumeen. The Syrian law imposes the female citizen to obtain a security approval ahead of her marriage to a non-Syrian. This law was imposed also on the female citizens marrying Kurds who are ajanib, creating by that extra troubles. This allowed brokers, lawyers and other intermediaries to ask large sums of money to obtain the authorisation to record the children as ajanib in the Personal Status Department. The poor, however, could not afford the costs, leaving the children maktumeen.” 114 Lukman Ayyanah comes from Ras al-Ein/Sari Kani. He left Syria in 2014 and currently lives in Austria. He had been a lawyer until he left Syria. The interview was conducted via the Internet on July 30, 2018. 41