You can’t go home again: the plight of Syria’s stateless Kurds

“You have stumbled on in darkness, you have been pulled in opposite directions, you have faltered, you have missed the way, but, child, this is the chronicle of the earth. And now, because you have known madness and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us – we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.”

― Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

Syria is host to one of the largest stateless populations in the world ¹.   Until the recent war in Syria ², which began in 2011, the estimated number of stateless people was around 300,000.  Two main minority groups in Syria are stateless: Palestinian Refugees from Syria who were displaced to Syria following conflict in Palestine and Israel and very many stateless Kurds.  In this blog, I want to look at the impact of statelessness on the Kurdish population of Syria.

Syrian citizenship disappeared

Syrians for Truth and Justice recently presented their report ‘Syrian Citizenship Disappeared: How the 1962 Census destroyed stateless Kurds’ lives and identities’ ³.  It documents the lives of stateless Kurdish people in the Hassaka Governorate of north-east Syria who were arbitrarily deprived of their Syrian nationality following the 1962 census in Syria.  The census was conducted in a single day, disproportionately targeting Kurds since Hassaka Governorate at the time had the highest proportion of Kurds in Syria.  No corresponding census was carried out in any other area of Syria.

The ENS Report on the statelessness of Syria’s Kurds is a very good resource on the background of the issues and how the war has affected stateless individuals and families who have fled the conflict ⁴.  In brief, there are two groups of stateless Kurds in Syria.  Those who took part in the census, but (as a precursor and cautionary tale about the current treatment of India’s Muslim population of Assam, on which see my blogs here and here) could not provide sufficient proof of residency in Syria prior to 1945.  And those who did not take part in the census at all.  The former group were treated as Ajanib (foreigner), were denied access to public services and were given only limited rights to own and inherit property.  The latter were described as Maktumeen (meaning concealed or hidden).  The Maktumeen suffered further limitations to their rights, even compared to the Ajanib, including restrictions on their freedom of movement within Syria.

Currently, approximately 46,000 Syrian Kurds are unregistered and without citizenship ⁵. Statelessness places severe limits on their freedoms and rights, since unregistered Kurds are also not able to register marriages or births and cannot obtain travel documents or passports.  They also face exclusion from work in state institutions.

A citizenship returned?  

The number of stateless people in Syria has fluctuated, in part due to the conflict and in part because efforts were made to register and naturalised a large number of the Kurdish population.  Some 160,000 Kurdish people were naturalised between 2011 and 2017.  Following a Presidential Decree to that effect, instructions were given to naturalise the Ajanib of Hassaka ⁶.  But the Decree did not apply to the Maktumeen at all and many Ajanib did not go through the complex and long process to apply for and be approved for naturalisation ⁷.

The progress to eradicate and reduce statelessness also stalled as discriminatory nationality laws created new stateless individuals.  Under Syrian nationality laws, mothers have limited rights to pass on their nationality, compared to Syrian fathers.  The child of a Syrian mother and stateless father or who is unknown or who does not want to or cannot pass on his nationality his child will make that child stateless.  In fact, although Syria is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, it has entered a reservation to Article 9 of the Convention.  Article 9 obliges parties to provide for equal nationality rights for men and women which would also include the transfer of nationality to children ⁸.  How this has far reaching consequences for women and their children, see more in my recent blog on the gender discriminatory laws of Nepal.

Continuing discrimination

The discrimination against the Kurdish minority population did not start and end with the 1962 census.  A safeguard to prevent statelessness available in Syrian nationality law requires that: “anyone born in the country and was not at the time of birth, entitled to acquire a foreign nationality by virtue of his parentage” ⁹.  But this safeguard has not been applied to benefit the stateless Kurdish population.  Kurdish children continue to inherit the statelessness of their parents ¹⁰.

Aside from the issue of whether or not Kurds are stateless in Syria or have been able to obtain citizenship, cultural and identity restrictions persist highlighting the fact that they are non-Arabs in the Syrian Arab Republic.  Examples of discriminatory treatment include banning the dissemination of materials written in the Kurdish language, banning its use in official institutions and banning the Kurdish language as a language of instruction in schools.  For more information, see the detailed report by Syrians for Truth and Justice ¹¹.

Statelessness and the war

The statelessness resulting from the discriminatory treatment of Syria’s Kurdish population is exacerbated by the conflict.  For example, children born outside Syria are automatically Syrian.  This is because Syria follows the jus sanguinis principle of nationality, allowing for nationality on the basis of the nationality of the parents, rather than on the basis of the place of birth, where the father is Syrian citizen.  But where the father’s nationality cannot be established, the child is at risk of statelessness.

For children to receive the right protection to mitigate their stateless status, their parent or parents have to be identified as stateless in the country in which they have sought refuge.  As the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and European Network on Statelessness have identified in their recent report ‘From Syria to Europe: Experiences of Stateless Kurds and Palestinian Refugees from Syria Seeking Protection in Europe’ ¹², parents are often identified as either Syrian or of nationality ‘unknown’, which limits both the parents’ and the children’s access to the safeguards in place for those who are stateless.

A bigger problem, a minority problem 

The Kurdish population of Syria are not the only Kurdish people who are stateless.  Many are found in Lebanon, over a million Feili Kurds previously living in Iraq, were denationalised and expelled by Saddam Hussain’s government in the 1970 and have made Iran their home ¹³.  Some Kurds have lost their Turkish, Iranian or Iraqi citizenship as a result of their quest for an independent country or other political activities ¹⁴.

Syria’s Kurds and the other marginalised Kurdish communities in neighbouring countries are prime example of the argument recently made by the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues that statelessness is first and foremost a minority issue:

“The vast majority of stateless populations today — more than three quarters, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2017 — are persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. This massive overrepresentation is no coincidence: patterns regarding the statelessness of minorities clearly suggest that the denial or deprivation of citizenship is too often neither entirely arbitrary nor accidental, but rather, for many millions of people, the result of deliberate policies and practices that render too many  of those who belong to minorities stateless and therefore particularly vulnerable in many societies.”

The problem of statelessness affecting some 10 million people today, including for the stateless Kurds, cannot be resolved while minorities are targeted or disproportionately affected in ways which result in individuals becoming or being born stateless ¹⁵.

A safe return?

Not all refugees are stateless and not all stateless people are refugees, but Syria’s Kurds fall into both categories.  They are rendered stateless within and by their home country by operation of Syria’s nationality laws and policies.  And now, because of the war, many (and their children) are in the precarious situation of being a refugee.  A stateless refugee.

And who knows when, if at all, they will be able to return safely to the country which does not accept them in the first place.  You can’t go home again.