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                 The state of statelessness in the Middle East

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   Future Development

The state of statelessness in the Middle East

   Omer Karasapan Friday, May 15, 2015
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   According to the UNHCR there are some 10 million stateless people
   worldwide, although the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI)
   cites a number of over 15 million. In part, the differences are due to
   different interpretations of Palestinian refugees. Chris Nash, director
   of the European Network on Statelessness describes the stateless as
   “legal ghosts, exposed to human rights abuses and with no recourse to
   justice.” Lacking legal documents, these individuals are without access
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   The Middle East now faces the prospect of adding hundreds of thousands
   to the stateless population. Of the 4 million Syrian refugees, over 1
   million are children under 18—many having left Syria without proper
   papers. There are also around 10,000 minors who have arrived in
   neighboring countries paperless and without an accompanying adult.

   More at risk of permanent statelessness are tens of thousands of
   newborn refugees, overwhelmingly from Syria, with many lacking papers
   to prove their nationality. Some 70 percent of babies born to Syrians
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   moreover, 500,000 more are expected from Syria before the end 2015.

   Today’s Syrian refugees are in addition to three older stateless
   populations in the Middle East. The Palestinians loom large and their
   challenges and numbers are of an order all its own. The ISI report on
   the World’s Stateless discusses the Palestinians in three categories:
   Palestinians who fall under the UNRWA mandate; Palestinians under
   UNHCR’s refugee mandate; and Palestinians potentially under UNHCR’s
   statelessness protection mandate. Accordingly, there are over 5 million
   Palestinians who are stateless or whose nationality status is unclear.
   The other distinct stateless groups include several hundred thousand
   Bidoon in the Persian Gulf region. When boundaries in the region were
   established, some countries used tribal affiliations rather than
   borders to determine citizenship and thousands ended up without any
   nationality. There are also over 200,000 stateless Kurds in Syria and
   Lebanon. Syria had announced a policy to address this issue in 2011 but
   the deterioration of the security situation has precluded a resolution.
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   In November 2014 the UNHCR announced a global campaign to end
   statelessness within 10 years. The campaign does not include the
   Palestinians since, according to U.N. refugee head Antonio Guterres,
   the U.N. General Assembly has recognized Palestine as a state, and that
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   humanitarian and aid agencies, and development institutions need to lay
   the groundwork for providing the support and resources needed to ensure
   that we don’t add to the number of the stateless as we grapple with
   this global challenge.