Lebanon: Discriminatory Nationality Law | WPN World People News

Lebanon should amend an outdated nationality law to ensure that children and spouses of Lebanese women have the same right to citizenship as those of Lebanese men, Human Rights Watch said on October 03.

The current law discriminates against women married to foreigners, their children, and spouses, by denying citizenship to the children and spouses. The law affects almost every aspect of the children’s and spouses’ lives, including legal residency and access to work, education, social services, and health care. It leaves some children at risk of statelessness. Lebanon should end all forms of discrimination against Lebanese women, their children, and spouses in the nationality law.

“Parliament should urgently amend a French mandate-era nationality law that has been causing untold hardship for more than 90 years with no justification,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Recent steps to provide access to basic rights like education and work to the children and spouses of Lebanese women are a step in the right direction, but confusing and piecemeal measures are no substitute for equal citizenship.”

Lebanon’s 1925 nationality law allows the foreign spouses of Lebanese men, but not women, to obtain citizenship after one year. The law also grants Lebanese citizenship only to children born to a Lebanese father, those born in Lebanon who would not otherwise acquire another nationality through birth or affiliation, or those born in Lebanon to unknown parents or parents of unknown nationalities. Children of Lebanese mothers with unknown paternity therefore have greater claims to citizenship than those with Lebanese mothers and a known foreign father.

Human Rights Watch spoke with 15 Lebanese women married to foreigners and noncitizen children of Lebanese mothers, who uniformly described barriers to basic rights and their feeling of rejection by the Lebanese government.

The noncitizen children and spouses must reapply for legal residency in Lebanon every one to three years. They need a permit to work in Lebanon, are barred from or face barriers to many professions, and report discrimination in the job market. They are denied access to national health insurance and government-subsidized medical care, even though they must pay into the system if they work. They also face bureaucratic hurdles in enrolling in public schools and universities.

While individual ministries have made incremental decisions to ease access to some basic rights, like education and work, these are piecemeal and subject to change. A lack of information about the current procedures and rules compounds barriers to accessing basic rights.

Lebanon should amend the nationality law to grant citizenship to the children and spouses of Lebanese women and end discrimination under its nationality laws, Human Rights Watch said. In the interim, the Ministries of Labor, Health, and Education should adopt and publicize decisions treating spouses and children of Lebanese women on par with Lebanese citizens, to ensure they are not denied basic rights and services.

Amanda, the 26-year-old daughter of a Lebanese mother and Swiss father, said that although she considered herself Lebanese, it was “frustrating and humiliating” to routinely reapply for Lebanese residency while officials remarked that she was lucky to have free residency, “as if this was some kind of blessing they were bestowing on me instead of my right.” May, 43, who is married to an Egyptian, said “It’s as if they want me to suffer after marrying […] We’re treated as if we have abandoned our country.”

Human Rights Watch wrote to the Ministries of Labor, Health, Education, Interior, and Social Affairs on August 24, 2018 about the issue. On September 24, the Ministry of Labor responded by confirming that the children and spouses of Lebanese women need a valid work permit to work legally in Lebanon, unlike the spouses and children of Lebanese men, and outlining the process by which they can do so. The Ministries of Health, Education, Interior, and Social Affairs did not respond to Human Rights Watch’s correspondence.

Lebanese activists have campaigned for two decades to amend the nationality law, including through organizing by the local NGOs Collective for Research and Training on Development - Action (CRTDA) and Masir.

For years, politicians have contended that allowing women who married Palestinians living in Lebanon to confer their citizenship to spouses and children would disrupt Lebanon’s sectarian balance. However, a 2016 census of Palestinians in Lebanon found just 3,707 cases of a Palestinian head of household married to a spouse of a different nationality. These stated justifications are also clearly discriminatory, Human Rights Watch said, as they are not applied to Lebanese men who marry foreigners – as many as four wives for Muslim men.

There is no publicly available data on the number of Lebanese women who have married foreigners or the number of children affected, but one 2009 UN Development Program-backed study found that there were 18,000 marriages between Lebanese women and foreigners in Lebanon between 1995 and 2008.

Frontiers Ruwad Association, a Lebanese human rights organization, found in a 2012-2013 study that 73 percent of stateless people in Lebanon, who are not of Palestinian origin, were born to a Lebanese mother. In an unpublished 2013 study, Frontiers Ruwad estimated that Lebanon had 60,000 to 80,000 stateless people, excluding Palestinians and migrants.

Ahead of Lebanon’s 2018 parliamentary elections, several politicians, including the caretaker Interior Minister, Nouhad Machnouk, publicly supported granting citizenship to the children of all Lebanese women. In response to a letter from Human Rights Watch, several parliamentary candidates and two major political parties also promised to amend Lebanon's nationality law to ensure that Lebanese women can pass on their citizenship to their children. On August 6, the Progressive Socialist Party announced a proposal to amend the nationality law to allow Lebanese women to pass on their citizenship to their children and non-Lebanese spouses on an equal basis with Lebanese men, but no action has been taken since.

Lebanon is far behind some other countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, including Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen, all of which provide equal citizenship rights to the children of both women and men. Iraq and Mauritania confer nationality to the children born in the country. “In Lebanon, there’s an impression that we’re advanced,” said May, who is married to an Egyptian. “It seems as if women have rights, but in the law we’re behind. It’s worse than other Arab countries.”

By depriving these children and spouses their right to obtain citizenship on an equal basis with the children and spouses of Lebanese men, Lebanon discriminates against Lebanese women married to foreigners, and their children and spouses. This violates both international law and its own constitution, article 7 of which guarantees all Lebanese equality before the law. Numerous UN committees have urged Lebanon to amend its nationality law, including the Human Rights Committee, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Lebanon is also a party to international human rights treaties that prohibit discrimination against women in conferring nationality, including the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Article 9 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in particular requires that states parties grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change, or retain their nationality, and equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.

“I’m almost certain my kids will travel and study abroad,” said May, 43, the mother of two daughters without Lebanese citizenship. “Unless things change, they will suffer. I always tell them ‘you’re Lebanese.’ It’s important. The only difference is that you don’t have the paper that says so. We’ll continue to fight for this. And we remain hopeful.”

Soruce:Human Rights Watch