The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli-V1.3 Table 4-Recuperation of nationality Law and Stateless registration Conclusion In summary, this study’s main purpose is to assess statelessness in Tripoli in terms of both problem scale and socio-economic dynamics. Firstly, we find that lack of birth registration is the lead cause of statelessness in Tripoli. This is often due to non-registered marriages between parents, but also to families’ negligence and ignorance. On the one hand, this is relatively solvable as the Lebanese legal system allows for such persons to claim the civil registration. On the other, this process has proved to be lengthy, costly and significantly cumbersome, which has rendered many families hopeless too soon and has discouraged others from even thinking about starting one. This legal process is even more complex and lengthy for cases of statelessness inherited from stateless ancestors of non-Lebanese or unknown origins. As such, limitations in the Lebanese legal system continue to contribute towards the persistence of statelessness. So does the lack the awareness of people about the importance of civil registration. Secondly, we find that statelessness encourages individuals to engage in bribery and fraud, in order to access the most basic human rights that they are not entitled for, simply because they don’t hold any official identification documents. Stateless persons in Lebanon do not have access to public health services, cannot own property, neither work formally or move around freely within the city due to the fear of being arrested at checkpoints. This doomed situation, along with many societal misperceptions about what stateless persons can and cannot access, has pushed many to drop out of school, thinking they won’t be able to complete education neither be employed afterwards anyway. Although stateless persons do have the right to complete education. As for societal interactions, statelessness has proved to be a source of embarrassment and perceived 52