Nationality and Cases of Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa Lebanon119 and Syria.120 Both of these provide for the automatic conferral of nationality to any child who is born on their territory who does not acquire any other nationality at birth. Nevertheless, these provisions can be considered essentially defunct, since they are virtually never applied in practice.121 Nowhere else is there a blanket safeguard in place that would allow any otherwise stateless child born in the country to acquire a nationality – in spite of the fact that there are two states parties to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness in the MENA which contains this explicit obligation.122 The only other relevant provision which can be found and which should go some way to mitigating statelessness for children born within the region is that which confers nationality to any child born within the state whose parents are stateless. Yet even this narrower safeguard is only in place in three countries: Syria,123 where it is also a defunct provision given that statelessness remains an inherited status in this country, as evidenced in the experience of the stateless Kurds;124 Tunisia,125 119 - Article 1(2), Decree No. 15 on Lebanese Nationality, 1925. 120 - Article 3(d), Syria Nationality Law No. 276, 1969. 121 - See for further comment on the gaps between law and practice in MENA nationality policy section 5 below. 122 - These are Libya and Tunisia, neither of which have incorporated the safeguard which the 1961 Convention prescribes to grant nationality to otherwise stateless children born in the territory in their nationality laws. 123 - Article 3(c), Syria Nationality Law No. 276, 1969. 124 - See Z. Albarazi, The Stateless Syrians, May 2013, available for download at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2269700. 125 - Article 8, Tunisian Nationality Code (Decree No. 63-6), 1963. 94