Zahra Albarazi birth from unlawful intercourse within the limits of the specified period of pregnancy, the child shall be attributed to the man.” Article 51 of the law, which stipulates that the consummation of an invalid marriage results in “filiation as prescribed in article 133”. Articles 134 and 135 specify the provisions regarding filiation. Paragraph 2 of article 134 stipulates that “if the declarant is a married woman or a woman in her waiting period,36 filiation to the father shall be established only by acknowledgement or providing proof”. And according to article 135, “maternal or paternal filiation of a child of unknown parentage shall be established by the acknowledgement of the declarant and a reasonable age difference between them” – this is the process to establish paternity/maternity for a child previously considered of unknown parentage. Taking into consideration the extraordinary living circumstances faced by Syrians under internal and external displacement, establishing paternity becomes almost impossible, especially in cases where the requirements and conditions stipulated by the law cannot be met. For instance, the lack of a “valid marriage contract” – being lost or unrecognised by the countries of asylum, e.g., for being issued by entities outside of the Syrian government control – means failure to register the marriage and therefore failure to establish paternity. In these cases, children born to Syrian mothers cannot be granted Syrian nationality. As mentioned above, failure to meet any of the requirements to confirm a marriage contract makes registering children born to Syrian mothers almost impossible, due to failure to establish the child’s filiation in relation to the Syrian father. For this reason, the Ministry of Justice must instruct Shariah courts in Syria, which are competent to consider matters of filiation in accordance with the Code of Civil Procedure, in order to facilitate the procedures of establishing paternity. Under domestic law, the Syrian government has duties to ensure that “everyone [shall] have a name and a surname, and the surname shall be passed on to the person’s children,” according to article 40 of the Syrian Civil Code. There are some discrepancies to this, since different official religions can stipulate their own provisions, but in general these provisions highlight how abundant the issue of filiation to a father is for a child, and that challenges to the norm may have long-term effects on the children’s legal status. 3.3 Deprivation/loss of nationality There are provisions in the Syrian nationality law that allow for the withdrawal of nationality from an individual in several circumstances, without regard to whether it would render the person stateless. According to the nationality legislation an individual can lose their nationality for the following reasons: • having obtained the nationality by fraud, • undergoing military service of another country without permission and working for a foreign state, • a naturalised citizen can have his or her nationality withdrawn if the Minister deems the deprivation to be in interest of the security and safety of the State, 36 This refers to a particular time a woman waits after divorce or death of her husband before she marries anyone else. 12 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2021/15 © 2021 Author(s)