312 Agata Szwed, Statelessness in the Context of the Migration Crisis in Europe: A Growing... untries. Today, the number of citizens who lose their Afghan citizenship is higher than those who acquire Afghan citizenship,33 although Afghan law attempts to prevent statelessness and recognises even ius soli established to prevent the emigration of its native citizens. As mentioned above, Syrian and Iraq provide a national law which discriminates against women in passing on nationality to their children (as is the case under Lebanese and Jordanian law, too).34 In contrast, Afghan nationality law − although similar to international standards of acquiring citizenship − faces the problem of its own citizens not wanting to stay in Afghanistan and preferring to disclaim citizenship. Even though most Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who emigrated to Europe after 2015 can prove their identity, their children born in exile face the big risk of statelessness if their parents cannot fulfil the conditions for nationality of the country of origin or if the host country does not accord nationality to stateless children born there. Special attention should be given to them as long as the unstable situation in their home countries persists and fuels migration, thereby greatly increasing the numbers of stateless people. It is hard to give the exact numbers of stateless persons as a result of the migration crisis, but some statistics show that in 2016 alone over 142,000 Syrian children were born in exile. Over 90% of Syrian families cannot complete the birth registration of children born in Lebanon,35 so the situation cannot be very different in Europe. This gives rise to an enormous problem that will need to be faced in the near future. 5 Propositions to resolve the problems 5.1 Global actions First and foremost, there is no universal defi nition of statelessness accepted by all countries. This is the source of all the differences in the understanding of and in the approach to this problem. Therefore, a greater role should be played by the UN and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as initiators and coordinators of activities aimed at developing such a definition, primarily through ratification of the CRSSP and CSP. Efforts should also be made to achieve 33 Abdullah Athayi, Report on Citizenship Law: Afghanistan (European University Institute 2017) 1 and 17 available at <https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/45933/ GLOBALCIT_CR_2017_09.pdf> accessed 22 March 2020. 34 See Decree No 15 on Lebanese Nationality including Amendments, 19 January 1925 and Law No 6 of 1954 on Nationality (last amended 1987) 1 January 1954. 35 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, project ‘Addressing Statelessness in the Syria Crisis Context’ available at <www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/research-projects/i/49/26549.html> accessed on 22 May 2020.