Living on the Margins: Children in Northwest Syria Being Denied Access to their Rights to Nationality and Legal Identity
Living on the Margins: Children in Northwest Syria Being Denied Access to their Rights to Nationality and Legal Identity
By: Dana Abdulhay and Briana McGowan
I) Introduction
Hundreds of thousands of children living in Northwest Syria (NWS)—an opposition area held by the non-state armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its administrative arm, the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG)—have been denied access to their rights to a nationality and legal identity—rights that are guaranteed under international and regional human rights instruments ratified by the Syrian Government. As a result, children of NWS face violations of other basic rights—including the denial of healthcare, education, humanitarian aid, and their right to freedom of movement. Compounding factors such as the February 2023 earthquake and issues with aid access have also resulted in the increased marginalization of children in rebel-held NWS. The Fletcher International Law Practicum’s report—produced in partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council—highlights the key barriers children in NWS face in accessing their rights to nationality and legal identity and stresses the need for two key reforms to help address these deprivations and prevent this new generation from becoming stateless: allowing Syrian women to pass their nationality to their children through the elimination of Syria’s discriminatory nationality law; and facilitating access to recognized legal identity documents.
II) Background
Over the past decade, the Syrian Civil War has resulted in between 300,000 and 500,000 deaths, as well as the forcible displacement of 13 million Syrians. Since the 2011 uprising, NWS has served as a refuge for Syrians fleeing Government forces, and a large proportion of the country’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in the area. Today, the Idlib region is home to roughly 2 million IDPs and controlled by HTS and its administrative entity, the SSG. HTS is subject to UN sanctions and considered a terrorist organization by a number of countries, complicating factors such as aid access for families living in NWS. NWS also experiences continued armed conflict between the Syrian and Russian Government forces and HTS, causing ongoing suffering. The humanitarian situation is dire, with 97 percent of the population living in poverty and aid access limited. Compounding their vulnerability, children in NWS face profound human rights violations and child protection risks due to the lack of access to their rights to legal identity and nationality.
III) International Law Obligations in NWS
Although the Syrian Government does not exercise effective control over NWS, its international legal obligations to protect the rights of children and individuals persist throughout Syria, including NWS. This includes ensuring children’s rights to nationality and legal identity, as well as protecting other basic rights. Moreover, de facto authorities in NWS—including HTS/SSG—must also respect and protect the human rights of individuals and groups in NWS, given HTS’s de facto control of the territory and SSG’s performance of governmental functions. This includes the obligation to protect international rights standards related to accessing civil documentation.
IV) Barriers to Children in NWS in Accessing Their Rights to Nationality and Legal Identity
Syria’s current laws and practices violate its international legal obligations and impede children’s ability to realize their rights to nationality and legal identity under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Arab Charter on Human Rights. Under Syrian domestic law, nationality is largely based on descent (jus sanguinas) rather than place of birth (jus soli). Because Syrian nationality is based specifically on paternal descent, Syrian women are generally unable to pass their citizenship onto their children. In the context of the ongoing thirteen-year conflict, such a gap in law makes it even more difficult for the thousands of children in NWS whose fathers are deceased, missing, unknown, or foreign, to realize their right to nationality. One estimate found that the conflict claimed ten times as many men as women; this means that those killed left behind countless fatherless children.
Additionally, there are significant barriers for children in NWS to access their right to birth registration, a prerequisite to establishing their legal identity and safeguarding their claim to Syrian nationality. For example, one administrative barrier to birth registration is that a child’s parents’ marriage has to be formally registered first. Consequently, children born to parents who have been religiously married are unable to access birth registration. Another barrier to birth registration is that many documents necessary for registering a child’s birth may have been lost or destroyed during the course of the war, displacement, and/or the February 2023 earthquake. There is also a high cost for registration, legal assistance, and transportation costs, which pose a serious hardship considering NWS’ high poverty rate. In addition, cross-line access has been generally closed between NWS and Syrian Government-controlled areas since March 2020, with some temporary points of access. However, the most significant barrier for families in NWS is arguably security concerns associated with traveling to Government-controlled areas to access civil registries, including the risk of detention, disappearance, and forced conscriptions.
While multiple barriers make it nearly impossible for families in NWS to access national identity documents, it is significantly easier for families to access civil documentation from de facto authorities. Documentation issued by SSG civil registries is, in many cases, increasingly necessary for families and children in NWS to go about their daily life. However, a major barrier to obtaining SSG documentation is that parents in NWS are afraid that possessing such documentation can increase security risks once outside NWS, since the Syrian Government and other armed groups interpret such documentation as affiliation with HTS/SSG. A perhaps even more significant barrier is that SSG documentation is not recognized internationally by any government, further undercutting the value and legitimacy of obtaining such documents.
V) The Impacts of Depriving Children of Their Rights to Nationality and Legal Identity on Other Basic Rights
Lack of identity documentation results in children in NWS experiencing multiple violations of their basic rights—including to healthcare, education, freedom of movement, and access to humanitarian aid. For example, one case study in the Fletcher report explores how the two children of Salma—a 19-year-old mother living in NWS—face significant rights deprivations due to their mother’s unregistered marriage, and thus, unregistered children: the children cannot access school, healthcare, and basic humanitarian assistance. The absence of a family booklet and birth certificates could lead to severe long-term consequences for her children, including limited access to formal employment, housing and property rights, and legal statelessness. For Salma, her own lack of civil registration also means that, should she divorce or should her husband die, her property and inheritance rights are at risk, as well as any inheritance claims of her children.
Salma faces numerous barriers to accessing documentation. Once her children were born, Salma’s family’s poor economic situation and her young age, along with community norms deeming religious marriage as sufficient, meant that she lacked the support to initiate civil documentation processes for her marriage and her children. Even if she does pursue registration of her marriage and her children, it would have to be with the local de facto authorities, not with the Syrian Government due to the security risks involved. This means that her children would have SSG documentation not recognized by any government in the world.
Salma and her children’s struggle caused by a lack of identity documentation is typical for many other families and children in NWS. Fifty-seven percent of households in NWS are unable to send their children to school due to lack of civil documentation, and nearly a third of students drop out of school for the same reason. Undocumented children are often rejected from schools or not allowed to, if admitted, receive completion certificates. Schools in NWS, including universities, lack accreditation and recognition by the Syrian Government, such that many children view education in NWS as a “dead-end.”
Undocumented children are especially vulnerable to child labor, as 82% of individuals surveyed in NWS report that children are engaging in this practice. Furthermore, the lack of essential documentation is affecting children’s prospects by denying them access to basic healthcare services such as vaccinations, as well as potentially life-saving treatments in Turkey.
Children’s lack of identity documentation also restricts their freedom of movement. Checkpoints demanding documentation restrict even internal mobility within NWS. The inability to move freely heightens vulnerability, trapping children in an area where basic needs and rights are compromised. For undocumented children, reuniting with their families abroad or returning to their families in Syria proves to be a challenge.
The series of rights violations which result from children in NWS’ lack of access to legal identity and nationality highlights not only the severe harms experienced by children, but also the urgent need for governments, the United Nations, and humanitarian actors to take concerted action.
VI) The Fletcher International Law Practicum Recommendations
Key recommendations to address the violations of children in NWS’ core rights—and ultimately mitigate their risks of statelessness—include pushing for legal and procedural reforms related to the Syrian Nationality Law and access of individuals in NWS to recognized legal identity documents.
Numerous civil society groups, United Nations bodies, and the Arab League support the reforming of Syria’s Nationality Law to eliminate its gender-discriminatory provisions—allowing Syrian women to pass nationality to their children in law and practice. By doing so, children in NWS, as well as children in Syrian refugee populations, would have better access to their right to nationality.
Another key recommendation put forward is facilitating access to recognized birth registration and identity documents for children in NWS. Given the barriers identified, this would require a series of measures, primarily by the Syrian Government. First, fees and fines associated with delayed birth (and marriage) registration should be waived. Second, the marriage registration requirement for birth registration should be eliminated. Although this reform is disputed and there are social taboos surrounding the idea of removing the marriage registration requirement, given the exceptional circumstances of war in particular, this reform is crucial. Until the marriage registration requirement can be eliminated, widows and mothers with absent husbands should be permitted to use various forms of evidence to prove their marriage, thereby facilitating birth registration and the conferment of nationality to their children. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Syrian Government, as well as other governments and stakeholders, should not penalize children and families for possessing SSG documentation. Instead, such documentation should be recognized as prima facie evidence of vital life events (such as birth, marriage, and death). This would help legitimize the identities of children and their families in NWS, reducing marginalization due to a lack of recognized legal documents.
VII) Conclusion
As the Fletcher Report shows, the inability of hundreds of thousands of children in NWS to access their rights to legal identity and nationality results in them becoming functionally or de facto stateless. Resulting rights deprivations—impacting their rights to healthcare, education, freedom of movement, and aid—compound the suffering of children in NWS, already vulnerable after more than a decade of war. Now is the time for concerted action by governments and other stakeholders before this generation of undocumented children living in NWS becomes a new stateless population in the region.
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