Statelessness Working Paper Series 2017/04 category of persons is not yet considered as stateless but is at risk of becoming stateless due to difficulties in securing the necessary evidence that they fulfil the nationality law criteria to acquire a nationality.12 The first part of this section aims at identifying groups currently stateless in Syria. As highlighted above, one of the causes of statelessness at birth is the inheritance from their parents. It is therefore important to identify stateless groups among the population fleeing Syria, who are likely to be found among the asylum seekers in Belgium, as their children born in Belgium will be at risk of statelessness. Despite the likely statelessness of their children born prior in their country of origin, this research focuses on prevention and not reduction and will therefore not address their situation. As another source of statelessness is the existence of gaps and conflicts between nationality laws, the second section analyses the Syrian Nationality Law (SNL) in order to identify gaps in acquisition of nationality when the birth occurs abroad, which might put children at risk of statelessness or render them stateless. The major problem identified in this regard is gender discrimination in Syrian Nationality Law. 2.1. Stateless Persons in Syria Syria has a high level of stateless persons living in the country. UNHCR officially reported 160,000 stateless persons living in Syria as of 2015.13 The number has decreased by around half compared to statistics of 2010 according to UNHCR database in which 300,000 stateless persons were accounted for.14 Moreover, the statistics of UNHCR exclude Palestinian refugees, also stateless, who reside in areas of operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). 15 Despite the Syrian Nationality Law providing for the acquisition of Syrian nationality for children born in Syria to unknown parents, parents of unknown/no nationality and to any child unable “to acquire a foreign nationality by virtue of his parentage”, 16 in practice this provision is not systematically implemented. 17 This issue is best illustrated with two communities within Syria, the Kurds and Palestinians. 2.1.1. Stateless Kurds The stateless status of most of the Kurdish population has historical roots. When Syria declared itself an Arab Republic in 1973, the constitution adopted emphasised the Arab ethnic nature of the Nation and thus Kurdish ethnicity was therefore not in line with the Arabisation of the country.18 The current stateless status of many Kurds has its origins in the 1962 census in the al-Hasakah region where most Kurds live. The census was originally organised to identify Kurds illegally entering from Turkey.19 The census differentiated three categories of people: Syrian Nationals, who could prove they held residence prior to 1945; Ajnabi, 20 those who were unable to confirm such a residence; and 12 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Self-Study Module on Statelessness, October 2012, http://www.refworld.org/docid/50b899602.html, p.8. 13 See UNHCR population statistics database, http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/time_series. 14 UNHCR, Statistical Online Population Database, www.unhcr.org/statistics/populationdatabase; UNHCR, Self-study, (2012), p. 8. 15 UNHCR, Statistical Online Population Database: Sources, Methods and Data Considerations (2013), http://www.unhcr.org/45c06c662.html. 16 Syrian Arab Republic, Legislative Decree 276 - Nationality Law, 24 November 1969, http://www.refworld.org/docid/4d81e7b12.html [Syrian Nationality Law - [SNL]] Articles 3C, 3D. 17 NRC & ISI, Understanding statelessness (2016),p. 17; Z. Albarazi, 'The Stateless Syrians', Tilburg Law School (2013), p.7. 18 Z. Albarazi, TLS (2013), p.14. 19 Human Rights Watch (HRW), Syria: The Silenced Kurds, October (1996), https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/SYRIA96.pdf. 20 Ajnabi – or Ajanib - means foreigners in Arabic. 3