Statelessness in the Middle East: First Lebanon, Now Jordan
Lori Eller
In August 2018, Boston University School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic (“the Clinic”) launched a long-term project to study the consequences of statelessness on the rights of both local and displaced populations in Middle Eastern countries. The Clinic began this project last year with a study of Lebanon. This year, my colleague Kayla Ghantous and I are focusing on Jordan. We launched a partnership with the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development, an exceptional nonprofit working in Jordan to further gender justice, provide legal aid and services to refugees and migrants, and advance many other important initiatives in the region.
The Context of Statelessness in Jordan
Despite a number of human rights treaties created in the 20th century that seek to universalize human rights and guarantee them regardless of nationality status, stateless persons today still face barriers in accessing basic human rights such as education, healthcare, and employment. Jordan, like Lebanon and most other countries in the MENA region, is not a party to either of the two United Nations treaties on statelessness (from 1954 and 1961), nor the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Optional Protocol which provide for the rights of refugees who may also be stateless. This leaves stateless persons in Jordan particularly vulnerable to economic, political, and social marginalization.
This year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Agency responsible for refugee protection around the world, held an Executive Committee meeting in October which included a High Level Segment on Statelessness. At this meeting, many countries made specific pledges to further this campaign’s goals, including commitments to reform citizenship laws, change administrative policies, and introduce legislative amendments. Unfortunately, however, no country in the MENA region, including Lebanon and Jordan, made such pledges to address statelessness.
It is in this context of growing awareness of statelessness, yet relative inaction in the MENA region, that we began our project in Jordan. Like Lebanon, Jordan is one of the countries most affected by the Syrian refugee crisis since 2011; it hosts the second highest number of refugees per capita, with Lebanon in first place. As of January 31, 2020, there are 745,673 refugees in Jordan. These refugees are primarily from Syria, but the number also includes refugees from Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia. Although Jordan does not offer refugees permanent integration, the state has for many years allowed displaced persons to enter and remain on its territory. These policies mean that large numbers of forcibly displaced persons in Jordan often remain there for decades if they cannot return to their state of origin or be resettled to a third country. This protracted displacement exposes children and adults to the risk of statelessness in the absence of access to legal status in Jordan.
Common Barriers in Lebanon and Jordan
A common barrier to social inclusion that displaced persons face in Lebanon and Jordan is the lack of civil documentation. Refugees may have lost identification, marriage, or birth certificates when leaving their home country, or these documents may have been taken from them at the border and not returned. These documents are often essential to obtain legal status, let alone employment, housing, healthcare and other services, for refugees and their children born in Jordan. Without the documentation necessary to issue work permits, displaced persons must either work illegally or rely on aid from humanitarian organizations as they await a solution to their displacement. Those forced to work illegally to survive face additional serious risks of exploitation, including trafficking and forced labor.
Also similar to Lebanon, Jordan’s laws governing access to nationality create barriers for children born to Jordanian citizens, putting them at risk of statelessness. Jordan’s and Lebanon’s nationality laws are based on patrilineal jus sanguinis, meaning that nationality at birth can only be derived from the father. The gender-discriminatory law has far-reaching consequences: a Jordanian woman married to a foreign national, or to a stateless person, cannot pass her nationality to her children. This means that Jordanian children born to Jordanian mothers and foreign or stateless fathers cannot obtain Jordanian nationality and are left without access to many basic rights. Many countries in the MENA region have comparable gender-discriminatory nationality laws.
Addressing Statelessness
The goal of finding commonalities among MENA countries’ nationality policies is to facilitate a conversation about statelessness across the MENA region, and create momentum to establish a regional statelessness network akin to that of other regions of the world. Lebanon and Jordan’s national laws and policies are failing to ensure that stateless persons or those at risk of statelessness enjoy the rights that these countries are bound to provide under international law. For these countries to prevent statelessness, they must meet their international commitments including ensuring every child’s right to a nationality and implementing gender equality in their nationality laws.
Learn more about statelessness through UNHCR’s iBelong Campaign or by reading our previous blogs on our fieldwork in Lebanon: The Campaign to End Statelessness in Lebanon and Gender-Discriminatory Nationality Law Multiplies Statelessness in Lebanon.
Author Bio: Lori Eller is a third-year law student at Boston University School of Law. She graduated summa cum laudefrom the University of Tennessee with a degree in political science. She is a member of the International Law Journal, and plans to work in international law.
