12 AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL The roots of statelessness in Lebanon stem from its formation in the 1920s. The French Mandate, followed by national authorities as of 1943, struggled to grant effective citizenship to its population, be they native residents, migrants, or emigrants originating from Greater Lebanon. Looking into statelessness means diving into the puzzle of Lebanon’s rich migratory history. Upon the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the foundations of what eventually became independent Lebanon in 1943 were set through the French Mandate. The High Commissioner was handed the authority of administrating Greater Lebanon in 1920. The people living across these territories came from various sectarian backgrounds, many belonging to religious minorities, such as the Maronites or the Druze, who found a safe haven in Mount Lebanon. After the Armenian genocide of 1915, surviving communities managed to seek refuge into Greater Lebanon. Land of abundant passage and migration, Greater Lebanon further welcomed Kurds, Syriacs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greeks, consolidating the cultural mosaic Lebanon will become famous for: a cosmopolitan Babylon inherited from the social fabric of the Ottoman era. When the High Commissioner decided to grant Lebanese citizenship to “all persons residing across the Greater Lebanon territories”, he brought together a patchwork of religious communities, ultimately creating a nationality of cosmopolitan roots1. In 1925, the High Commissioner enacted the nationality law formally granting Lebanese citizenship to persons born in the territories now forming Greater Lebanon (Article 1), and ensuring that right for emigrants of Lebanese origins. However, the birth of the Lebanese nationality struggled with political considerations attached to the establishment of Greater Lebanon. Many of the residents, mainly among Muslim communities, boycotted the 1921 and 1932 census which constituted the initial waves of access to citizenship under the French Mandate. Additionally, administrative and technical complications prevented the registration of all residents entitled to the Lebanese nationality. Thus, many groups fell into statelessness, initiating a domino effect still visible to this day. After the civil war, Decree 5247 of 1994 opened the door to citizenship according to naturalization provisions. Despite the Decree being framed as addressing statelessness, a much smaller proportion of the 202,527 individuals (36% according to some estimates1) represented stateless persons. As such, the Decree failed to ultimately end statelessness in Lebanon, leaving many communities and newer generations after them in the same legal limbo. The backdrop of such condition has been exacerbated since 2019, as the country is going through one of its worst social and economic crisis. The spiraling of Lebanese socio-economic indicators dramatically increased poverty levels, with a paralyzing effects on the state’s public institutions, and hitting vulnerable groups such as stateless communities the hardest. There are still no formal figures capturing the extent of statelessness in Lebanon to date. Fortunately, this is starting to change. 1. Melkar El Khoury, Thibaut Jaulin (2012). EUDO Citizenship Observatory: Lebanon Country Report, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, September 2012. © 2023 Siren Associates. All Rights Reserved.