01/06/2006

“I wake up every day in a house that doesn’t belong to me,” Ahmed tells Refugees International. “As a stateless Kurd I have no civil rights. I can’t buy a house or land. My witness in civil court is refused.” Ahmed is stateless because his father has no nationality, and in Syria, citizenship cannot be passed from mother to child.

Ahmed explains that this difficult situation came about more than 40 years ago when the government of Syria decided to take a census. “The authorities gave people in the northeastern part of the country 10 days to register as Arab citizens. If they came and registered, they remained citizens. There were many people in many villages who could not just go and register. It was a short time. And some of those people refused to register because they were Kurds and not Arabs.” Ahmed’s grandfather, who lived in the center of a city at the time, had an eye problem and did not register. His brother who lived in the countryside did register and retained his citizenship. About a year after the census was completed, any remaining pre-1962 identity cards were taken from people who had not registered in the census.

Ahmed moved from his hometown in the northeast to Aleppo to get a university education. He explains that as a student without nationality he faced a lot of obstacles getting permission to study there. After he filled out the necessary forms, the administrators sent him to a secret office to complete a detailed report and be questioned about the comings and goings of his father, mother, and friends as well as any activity in the Kurdish political parties. “When I graduate, I will have to do the same thing,” Ahmed says. “I can’t get a diploma without this procedure. Then when I finish school, I cannot use my education. I will go to the bus station and look for work as a salesman or a porter.”

Status affects young men in other ways too. After the 2004 Qamishli uprising, Ahmed’s brother was arrested. He felt, though he is not sure, that he was tortured more than individuals with citizenship. The guards who interrogated him said, “You are foreign, the reason for all problems in our country.” They blamed him for the incident.

Furthermore, Ahmed says, “When it is time for a guy to look for a girl he looks for one with nationality. Women without nationality stay at home and don’t get married.”

There are people who lack even foreigner status (“Maktoumeen” in Arabic). This group includes one of Ahmed’s cousins. He says, “That group of people is not on this earth. They are not alive. Those people don’t have any rights. They can’t even get permission to enter primary school.”

Life is so difficult for stateless Kurds in Syria that some people try to obtain nationality in alternative ways. One family Ahmed knows paid SYP 600,000 to get documents to prove they are Syrian citizens. In the end they only received photocopies of old photographs and documents, and not the originals, so they are still without official proof of nationality.

Another family --- a father, mother, and their five children --- decided to leave Syria about three years ago. After escaping to Egypt, the family was essentially trapped there for six months because they couldn’t move backward or forward. If they go back to Syria, Ahmed says, they will be jailed or killed. Yet without official citizenship documents, they risked arrest or deportation if caught leaving Egypt or entering a third country. Moreover, the people who helped them get out of Syria took advantage of their vulnerability during this time since they knew the family couldn’t return. Later they paid about SYP 1 million ($300,000-$350,000 each) to get to Europe. Nevertheless, “While they were stateless in Syria, they now they live in a tent camp in Europe and have no official status there either.”

Director of Research Maureen Lynch and Consultant Perveen Ali assessed the situation for stateless Kurds in Syria in late October.