Lebanon

KEY ISSUES

• Statelessness is a longstanding and inter-generational issue in Lebanon, the origins of which can be traced back to the creation of the Lebanese state, but there is no official data on the number of people affected.
• Lebanon is one of 24 countries globally that discriminate against women in relation to the conferral of nationality to their children, and a significant number of stateless people in Lebanon are born to Lebanese mothers. 
• Although the law provides for Lebanese nationality to be grated to a child born in the territory who would otherwise be stateless and to foundlings, these safeguards are rarely implemented in practice.
• There are tight deadlines for birth registration in Lebanon and missing these deadlines can lead to a risk of statelessness, for refugee children.
• Lebanon is not party to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and has no statelessness determination or protection system in place.

STATELESSNESS IN LEBANON

Statelessness is a longstanding and inter-generational issue in Lebanon, the origins of which can be traced back to the creation of the Lebanese state, the establishment of its nationality law and gaps in registration under the country’s only population census in 1932. The problem of statelessness is amplified by the gender discriminatory nationality law, under which citizenship is conferred at birth only if the father is Lebanese, as well as the lack of functioning of legal safeguards to prevent childhood statelessness and gaps in birth registration coverage. Statelessness also arises among the refugee population in Lebanon and their children.

Lebanon is marked by an asterisk (*) in UNHCR’s global statistics, denoting that there is information about stateless people in the country but no reliable data. The country has no dedicated mechanism for identifying statelessness and no official statistics for statelessness exist. Various estimates have been provided by different non-governmental sources. In 2009, the Individual Initiative Association for Human Rights issued a report indicating the presence of approximately 100,000 stateless individuals in Lebanon, while in 2011, Frontiers Ruwad Association estimated the number of stateless people in the country – excluding Palestinians – to be between 80,000 and 200,000. Some further mapping efforts have taken place in recent years. A study by Siren Associates and MARCH in 2019 found around 2,200 stateless individuals in the vicinity of Tripoli and its surrounding areas, 75% of whom had a Lebanese mother, and estimating that another 27,000 people were stateless throughout Lebanon. A further survey by Siren Associates with UNHCR in 2021 identified 4,088 stateless persons within just the northern governorate of Akkar, 25% of whom were found to have Dom origins. Lebanon also hosts approximately 174,000 Palestinian refugees who are registered with UNWRA and several thousand “non-ID Palestinians” who are not registered with UNRWA or with the Lebanese government and have no valid legal status in the country. There is no data on how many of the approximately 1.5 million refugees from Syria who reside in Lebanon are affected by statelessness, but stateless Kurds and Palestinians from Syria are among those who were displaced by the conflict and children born in Lebanon to refugee parents from Syria may also be at risk of statelessness.

Some stateless people in Lebanon are registered with the authorities as Qayd El Dares: people of unspecified nationality whose original nationality is pending and whose case “under study” by the General Directorate of General Security. Stateless people who are not recorded in any official civil registry are referred to as Maktoum el Qayd, meaning “unregistered”. This group encompasses individuals who were born to a stateless father (inherited statelessness), to parents of unknown origin, or to parents with a recognized nationality but who neglected to register their child's birth within the one-year time limit. Beyond this deadline, birth registration can only be achieved through a protracted and expensive legal process. 

Lebanon's lack of accession to the statelessness conventions contributes to the lack of a legal framework to deal with the significant numbers of stateless people in the country. Stateless people and children of Lebanese women who are denied Lebanese nationality face wide-ranging human rights violations and hardships throughout their lives. Stateless individuals lack access to public healthcare, property ownership, formal employment, and freedom of movement due to insecurity in passing internal checkpoints. They may be unable to travel because they do not have an ID; children are unable to sit public exams to access certain professions; formal employment is often denied and informal sector jobs come with increased risk of exploitation; some children are denied education and healthcare, resulting in 'lifelong discrimination.' These challenges, coupled with societal misconceptions and prejudice, have led many to abandon their education, believing it will not secure future employment.

In late 2021, the Lebanese Ministry of Labour (MoL) issued a decision to lift the restrictions on stateless people working in certain professions. The decision specified that Palestinians born in Lebanon and officially registered with the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities, foreigners born to Lebanese women, foreigners married to Lebanese women, and those born in Lebanon with unregistered Maktumi al-qayd status would be able to benefit from the decision. However, it appears that this decision has not been implemented in practice. Civil society is working with the MoL on a decision specifically regulating stateless persons’ access to work, but without progress so far.

THE RIGHT TO NATIONALITY IN LEBANON

Lebanon’s Nationality Law is detailed in Decree No. 15, dating back to 1925. It has undergone just one substantial amendment, in 1960, granting women married to foreigners the right to retain their Lebanese citizenship (whereas previously they would lose their citizenship upon marriage). The law contains a number of gender discriminatory provisions. Lebanon is one of 24 countries globally that discriminate against women in relation to the conferral of nationality to their children: the primary mode by which children in Lebanon acquire nationality is still through the father only. The nationality law also permits foreign spouses of Lebanese men, but not women, to pursue citizenship after one year (Article 5). These provisions combined make it almost impossible for the child of a Lebanese mother and a foreign father to acquire Lebanese nationality and can place children at a significant risk of statelessness where they cannot acquire the nationality of their foreign father. According to a 2009 field study, between 1994 and 2008 there were around 18,000 marriages between Lebanese women and foreign men, with an estimated 41,400 children being negatively impacted as a result of the gender discriminatory provisions on conferral of nationality. In 2018 and 2019, parliamentarians proposed two bills aimed at granting women equal rights to confer nationality to their children. However, despite the advocacy efforts of the organisation My Nationality is a Right for Me and My Family Campaign, neither of these bills were brought to a vote. Lebanese lawmakers persist in enacting new discriminatory measures against women entrenching further systemic gender discrimination in the Lebanese legal realm. 

Article 1 of Lebanon’s nationality law confers Lebanese citizenship to children born within Lebanon who are without a nationality or whose parents are unknown or of unknown nationality. However, these safeguards are rarely enforced successfully. A significant hindrance is the authorities' inability to identify those who benefit from the safeguard and their overall failure to recognize statelessness. 

Naturalisation requirements as set out in the law are fairly liberal in Lebanon, requiring only five years of consecutive residence. However, the application procedure is discretionary and subject to issuance of a naturalisation order by the Cabinet or Head of State, creating significant political hurdles and delays. There is no facilitated naturalisation procedure for stateless persons. Since the 1975-90 Civil War, naturalisation in Lebanon has sparked controversy due to its perceived impact on sectarian balance, known as power sharing. The constitution of Lebanon guarantees all 18 religious sects in the country representation in government, the military, and the civil service. The issue of citizenship becomes inseparable from a person's religious affiliation, replacing the focus on human rights. On 20 June 1994, Decree No. 5247was issued, aiming to legalise the status of a large number of persons who have been deprived of it previously. In theory, this Decree was grounded in equitable eligibility criteria, as applicants were required to submit supporting evidence of their ties to Lebanon, such as filiation, residency, or property ownership. However, the process suffered from a lack of transparency and unclear conditions. Individuals who were naturalised under this decree found themselves unable to rectify their records or register marriages and births that occurred prior to the issuance of the Decree. The Court of Cassation postponed the resolution of these applications pending the resolution of the review process. The official statistics from the Directorate General of Personal Status show that the number of persons who have obtained citizenship through the Decree is close to 153,452, although the 2021 UNHCR and Siren Associates study places this number at 202,527. 

LEBANON’S INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS

Lebanon is not party to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness or the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. However, Lebanon is a party to core international human rights treaties and conventions that confer on the state certain obligations in relation to the right to a nationality and non-discrimination. These include, among others, the CRC, ICCPR, CEDAW, CRPD, and CERD. While Lebanon acceded to CEDAW, it maintains a reservation to its Article 9(2). For more information on regional standards and intergovernmental commitments in MENA, see the StatelessHub MENA page.

• Click here to see what Recommendations Lebanon has received through the Universal Periodic Review
• Click here to see what Recommendations Lebanon has issued through the Universal Periodic Review
• Click here to see what voluntary pledges have been made by Lebanon

The content on this page has been reviewed by Abbas Taleb, Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights

[Last updated January 2024]

Cover image by Nabih el Boustani