Summary: Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion launches new research on statelessness in the Syrian context

24th November 2016: SRT grantee the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has published new research into the risk of statelessness among Syrian refugees.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, as many as 4.8 million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries and over a million have travelled to Europe. The overwhelming majority of these refugees hold Syrian nationality and face no immediate risk of statelessness. Moreover, children born in exile inherit Syrian nationality automatically, by operation of the law, if their father is a Syrian citizen. However, a small proportion of the refugees are already stateless (i.e. are not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law). Others, particularly children born in exile, are at risk of statelessness due to the operation of Syria’s nationality law or difficulties documenting their connection to Syria and right to nationality.

In collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council and with funding from NWO-WOTRO, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has conducted an assessment of the risk of new cases of statelessness arising among Syrian refugees and their children and the particular vulnerabilities of stateless refugees from Syria. Their research focused on the countries neighbouring Syria which are hosting the greatest numbers of refugees: Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt.

A specific goal of the project was to inform the development of a “toolkit” to help organisations engaged in the refugee response to better understand the intersections between their work and statelessness, and to share good practices, innovations and practical steps that they can take to ensure the effective protection of stateless people and contribute to the longer-term prevention and reduction of statelessness. The toolkit and accompanying report will be launched this week with events taking place in London, Oslo and The Hague.

The toolkit can be found here.
The report is available here.