Activists stress, restoring citizenship should be treated as right, not as gift

The conference "Gaps in the Syrian Nationality Law: Achieving Gender Equality," organized by the National Commission for Transitional Justice, kicked off yesterday, Monday, at the Rida Saeed Conference Hall at Damascus University.

According to the Commission, the conference aims to discuss legal gaps related to gender equality in the Syrian nationality law, highlight the challenges facing Syrian mothers and their children, and address the risks of statelessness and difficulty accessing basic services. It also presents comparisons with experiences of nationality law reform in the Middle East and North Africa.

During the conference, several affected Kurdish individuals shared their personal experiences. One woman explained that her father's foreign nationality and her mother's Syrian nationality placed her family in the category of "unregistered persons," depriving them of education, employment, and healthcare, in addition to what she described as a "social stigma" that prevented her from achieving her aspirations.

She stated that the 1962 census law was an arbitrary and illegal measure, and that the state must now bear moral responsibility and automatically restore citizenship to all those who lost it, without conditions.

For her part, journalist and civil activist Avin Yousef, a member of the "Network of Victims of Statelessness" in Hasaka, stated on the sidelines of the conference that the core issue is that "citizenship is a right that has been taken from us, and we want it back." She argued that using the term "restoration of citizenship" is more accurate than "granting citizenship" because those affected are "fundamentally Syrian citizens."

Yousef emphasized that the denial of rights has persisted for approximately 64 years, stressing the necessity for any legal reforms to encompass all those whose citizenship has been withheld, including those residing abroad, while granting them an open-ended timeframe to complete the necessary procedures.

For his part, Abbas Ali Moussa, a member of the Solidarity Association for Victims, described the issue of statelessness as "a very old wound," indicating that the true approach to addressing the issue must be legal. He called for enshrining Decree No. 13 within a constitutional framework that protects the rights of those affected and prevents future manipulation of these rights.

The roots of the issue go back to an exceptional census conducted in Hasaka Governorate in 1962, which resulted in the stripping of more than 100,000 Syrian Kurds of their citizenship. Subsequent decrees did not fully resolve the problem, especially for those whose births were not officially registered. Estimates indicate that the number of unregistered individuals exceeded 517,000 by 2011, while more than 150,000 remain stateless.

At the conclusion of the conference, the participants stressed that resolving the issues in Syria on all levels requires the state to have the courage to recognize the other. On the Kurdish level, the participants emphasized that the issue requires an official acknowledgment of the historical error, a comprehensive legal reform, clear and tangible procedures, and the implementation of recent decisions without delay to restore citizenship and provide reparations, thus ensuring the resolution of one of the most complex humanitarian issues in Syria

ANHA