Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2021 3(1) nonetheless, excluded from naturalisation in host Arab countries — including in Syria. Their identity documents are not equivalent to a citizenship and Palestinians remain de jure stateless. This situation of legal insecurity has been further exacerbated by the Syrian conflict. Before the war broke out, Syria hosted two main Palestinian refugee camps: (i) Yarmouk camp located near Damascus where approximately 160,000 Palestinian refugees were living; and (ii) De’raa camp in southern Syria was home to 10,000 people. Both refugee camps have been the scene of violent unrest and fights between Syrian authorities and armed groups. 188 There are now only 1,000 people left in Yarmouk, and less than 400 families in De’raa. 189 Palestinians from Syria who fled to neighbouring countries are particularly vulnerable because of their exclusion from Syrian citizenship. The legal situation of the Kurdish community of Syria is even more precarious, as the next sub-Part elucidates. C Kurdish Syrians: When Ethnic Identities Meet Stateless Identities With an estimated number of 35 million people, the Kurdish community is referred to as ‘the largest stateless nation in the world’. 190 Similar to the Palestinians, they are united through ethnicity, culture, history and language — although they do not share a common dialect. 191 They used to have their own independent state, in the form of a kingdom, before the invasion by the Ottomans in the 13th century. 192 And, again, like the Palestinians, the dislocation of the Ottoman Empire by victorious European powers left them with no land. They ended up divided among the four modern states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. 193 It is estimated that the Kurds in Syria represent about 10% of the total Syrian population. 194 On 5 October 1962, Syrian authorities enacted a census in the Kurdishpopulated governorate of Al-Hasaka in northern Syria. 195 The former Syrian Government 196 argued that, from 1945 onwards, many migrants crossed the Turkish–Syrian border irregularly and established themselves in Syria by using falsified identity documents. 197 According to this point of view, the 1962 census committee was conducted to identify these migrants and at repealing the Syrian nationality they supposedly obtained fraudulently. 198 Syrian authorities provided less than 24 hours to the inhabitants of the province of Al-Hasaka to provide documents proving their lawful residency prior to 1945. The outcome of the 1962 census led to the identification of three categories of population: 188 ‘Almost All UNRWA Installations in Yarmouk and Dera’a Camp in Syria Severely Damaged 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 or Destroyed’, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (online, 1 December 2018) <https://bit.ly/2TuPlTj>. Statelessness in Syria (n 149). Kerim Yildiz, The Kurds in Syria: The Forgotten People (Palgrave Macmillan 2005) 12. ibid 4. ibid 18. Treaty of Sèvres (n 66). Sean Lee, ‘The Kurds of Syria’ (2017) 25(2) Arab Studies Journal 226. Legislative Decree No 93 (1962) (Syrian Arab Republic). It must be noted that the current Syrian regime did not enact this census. The authorities in power at the time were a previous government that lasted less than five years. See Albarazi (n 72) 7. Committee on the rights of the Child, Consideration of Report of States Parties (Continued): Initial Report on Syrian Arab Republic (Continued), CRC, UN Doc CRC/C/SR.361 (21 March 1997) 8. ibid. 26