Syria’s undocumented children ‘pay the price’ of war and a law that shuts out mothers

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Many children born in Syria since the war began in 2011 have no legal identity because nationality passes only through fathers – many of whom are dead or missing – a member of the independent UN commission investigating rights violations in the country said on Wednesday.

“A child born in the war did not choose the war, did not choose the enforced disappearance of their father, did not choose their mother’s unregistered marriage…Yet they alone pay the price – in education, in health, in nationality and in dignity,” said Monia Ammar, one of the commissioners on the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

Ms. Ammar was speaking at a high-level panel in Geneva, co-hosted with the Syrian Government, as the Commission released a new policy paper on the issue.

She called the lack of documents “among the most serious consequences of the legacy of the conflict”.

Syria’s social affairs minister told the same meeting that a reform letting mothers pass on nationality is nearing approval.

The problem is especially acute because an estimated 12 out of every 13 people killed in the war were men.

‘A wall of procedures’

Under Syria’s 1969 nationality law, when the father is absent “the child finds themselves in a legal vacuum”, Ms. Ammar said.

She described the law as gender-based discrimination that is “doubled for girls”. It is also at odds with Syria’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Commission has no precise figures on how many children are affected, she said. But it has heard from widows and mothers “who carry their children in their arms and do not have a single piece of paper proving that these children legally exist”.

They face “a wall of procedures” and social stigma, and many end up giving up.

Ms. Ammar welcomed the steps the authorities have taken since the fall of the former regime. But she warned that “legal reforms, however important, are not enough on their own” without changes in practice and culture.

The paper calls for every child to be registered whatever the circumstances of their birth, alternative documents to be accepted and nationality granted to children of Syrian mothers.

‘Invisible’ to the State

Syria’s Minister of Social Affairs and Labour, Hind Kabawat, told the story of Maryam, a mother from Dara’a.

Maryam was left alone and displaced with two young children after losing her husband in the war. Her marriage had been conducted locally and his death was never officially recorded.

“Under our outdated laws, she cannot pass her Syrian nationality to her children, so in the eyes of the State they became invisible,” the minister said.

Desperate families sometimes register children under relatives’ names, including maternal uncles, just to get them into school or medical care. Ms. Kabawat said these families deserve support rather than punishment.

She called for a legal grace period so they can put the records right.

Grace period

The proposal now at the approval stage would allow mothers to pass on nationality under certain conditions, “so that no child is punished or left stateless simply because their father is missing, dead or foreign”.

Ms. Kabawat stressed that children of ISIL (or Da’esh) fighters should not be held responsible for their fathers’ choices. She repeated the call for countries of origin to take some responsibility for child welfare.

Her Government’s aim, she said, is that “Maryam from Dara’a will never again have to wonder whether her children truly belong to the country they were born in.”