The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli-V1.3 A closer look at articles 1 and 2 of the Nationality Law and its application reveals that practices related to statelessness have not been necessarily conformant with the legislation. According to these articles, every child born to stateless parents, or a stateless father and a Lebanese or understudy mother,35 or any foundling born to unknown parents on the Lebanese territory should be granted the Lebanese nationality. However, Lebanese courts have rendered these articles inoperative by requiring the applicant to prove negative facts such as their unknown nationality or unknown parents. Even in the case of “under-study” persons, whose files have been pending for decades, they still bear the same responsibility of proving their unknown origins even though the fact that they are still under study for so long could have been on its own a proof of their unknown origins. Yet, their “under-study” cards are still considered “insufficient evidence that the parents are of unknown nationality or that the children did not, by affiliation, acquire a foreign nationality.”36 This reluctance to apply the law directly could be due to the fact that, before 1962, most of the holders of “indeterminate nationalities” were foreign refugees who came to Lebanon and tried to benefit from article 3 in order to claim the Lebanese nationality for their children born in Lebanon.37 Access to Rights in Lebanon In spite of the variety in the underlying causes behind statelessness, stateless persons share very similar limitations on their access to rights in Lebanon. The table below summarises that for all three categories of statelessness in Lebanon. 35 Since the Lebanese nationality law is based on patriarchal lineage only, according to article 1. Makhlouf, ‘Nationality Under Study’ (2016). 37 Frontiers Ruwad, Invisible Citizens (2011), p.100. 36 26