EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Syria can reduce and mitigate the risk of statelessness, while also improving the protection, security and dignity of those displaced. Across the region, UNHCR, governments, civil society and communities are working to ensure all children are born with a legal identity and a nationality. Progress is especially notable for Syrian refugee children in the steps Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP) countries are taking to document and register every child born in their territory, as well as the growing number of States in the region that are reforming their nationality laws to expand the rights of women and children. To prevent and reduce statelessness, efforts are underway in countries affected by conflict to strengthen and rebuild civil registration systems and help IDPs and conflict-affected families obtain and replace civil status documentation. Despite this progress, significant challenges remain and much more needs to be done to address statelessness across the region, including with respect to deprivation of nationality. To prevent and reduce statelessness in MENA, including in relation to the crises currently affecting the region, the following actions are recommended: ♦ Promote international standards related to the prevention and reduction of statelessness and accession to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. ♦ Remove gender-discrimination from nationality laws, especially by recognizing the right of women to confer nationality to their children on an equal basis as men. ♦ Support more effective implementation of existing legal safeguards against statelessness at birth, such as the provision to grant nationality to children of unknown parentage. ♦ Support dedicated efforts to reconstitute civil registries in countries affected by conflict and rebuild the reach and capacity of their national civil registration systems. ♦ Register and document every child immediately after birth, in particular by developing multi-sectoral national strategies and frameworks to achieve universal birth registration and dedicated efforts to register children at heightened risk. ♦ Identify solutions to facilitate and simplify the late registration of births and marriages without penalty. ♦ Strengthen engagement with refugees, host communities and internally-displaced persons as key sources of support, advice and problem-solving assistance in matters of civil registration. ♦ Integrate statelessness prevention strategies into programming and advocacy on child protection and the prevention of and response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). ♦ Improve data collection on stateless populations, populations at risk of statelessness and access to birth registration. 5