Lebanon is not a State party to the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions. The Lebanese nationality law (Decree 15 of 1925) contains gender discriminatory provisions that do not allow women to pass their nationality to their husbands and children on equal grounds with men. The nationality law contains safeguards against statelessness at birth; however, these are not consistently implemented in practice. The legal and administrative framework on civil registration (1951 Registration of Personal Status Law), is not fully in line with Lebanon’s international obligations, particularly the right to universal birth registration enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Barriers to birth registration include a complex and relatively costly procedure with onerous requirements for documentation, and a judicial process for late birth registration if a birth is not registered within one year of time. With few exceptions, stateless persons cannot register civil events. Children born out of wedlock can also face discrimination and be denied birth registration. Although the 1925 Lebanese Nationality Law states that a child born to a Lebanese father is a Lebanese national, in practice, children whose birth is not registered are not considered as nationals by the Lebanese authorities. These individuals transfer their stateless status through generations as they are not able to register the birth of their children as well as their marriages and deaths. Consequently, they cannot benefit from certain provisions of the nationality law that would grant them Lebanese nationality, such as facilitated acquisition of nationality through marriage to a Lebanese man or birth in Lebanon to stateless parents. Steady progress was achieved since 2017 with key decisions taken by the Personal Status Department, in particular by removing some obstacles to register late births for Syrian refugees and allowing divorced women to obtain the individual civil extracts of their children. However, such measures do not benefit other refugee population groups or the current stateless population in Lebanon.
In 2021, UNHCR will continue to support open cases of strategic litigation under the nationality law to develop jurisprudence and help clarify the interpretation of key provisions of the Lebanese legal framework. UNHCR will reinforce its partnership with key Ministries and UN agencies in particular in the area of law reform, support to national institutions, birth registration and raising awareness on statelessness issues and advocacy, including as part of the UNICEF/UNHCR Global Coalition on every child’s right to a nationality. Advocacy interventions with the government and through existing human rights mechanisms and inter-agency opportunities will continue.
UNHCR will continue supporting the existing Working Group on statelessness which convenes representatives of the Ministries of Interior, Justice, Public Health, Social Affairs, Education, as well as UNHCR and UNICEF. This working group proved to be an important forum to advocate on finding solutions to statelessness and enhance the protection of stateless persons.
Considering the exceptional situation prevailing in Lebanon, with a deep economic crisis exacerbated by the socio-economic impact of COVID-19, UNHCR will expand its programme in 2021 to provide social counselling and basic support to the most vulnerable stateless persons