“THE RULE OF THE FATHER” The enrooted patriarchal nature of the Lebanese system has a significant impact, leading to countless cases of statelessness. • The centrality of the male figure in the Lebanese system has entrapped stateless persons in cases where the father is absent or the husband is negligent. • Among the nine surveyed stateless who were not registered through the 1994 mechanism: five had husbands unwilling to do the procedure and three women could not benefit from it because their fathers were either outside the country or did not want to request it. One male respondent also explained how his father’s death prevented him from acquiring citizenship. Fig 15. Why did you not benefit from the 1994 naturalization process? (Selected semantic cloud) • Without the male figure, many women find themselves unable to request citizenship for themselves and their family. As such, the path toward gender equality in Akkar remains quite long. © 2021 Siren Associates. All Rights Reserved.