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DUBAI: Speaking at a cottage in the southwest of Beirut, 58-year-old Khodar Khalaf described his life in four words: “I don’t exist.”

Khalaf was born in Lebanon to poor parents who died at a young age. This meant that his birth was not registered and he was raised in an orphanage. He must be a Lebanese citizen but he is instead stateless. “I can’t travel, I don’t qualify for healthcare and I can’t work. I don’t have an identity card,” he said.

Khalaf’s case is similar to that of at least 27,000 others who have fallen through the cracks during decades of war, confusion and bureaucratic inertia.

In a country that is rapidly losing the ability to care for its documented citizens, being stateless in Lebanon has become an unbearable curse. With no recourse to state funds or aid, the Khalaf has to wander here and there to survive.

Apart from poverty, discrimination and a lack of legal avenues or access to the powerful, the nation’s stateless are forced to do everything they can to threaten to create a permanent underclass in the midst of an unprecedented economic downturn. Huh.

According to Siren Associates, a non-governmental organization that advises public sector clients on governance-reform initiatives, the number of stateless people in the northern city of Tripoli alone is about 2,200 – a figure expected to double over the next 15 years. Is. ,

In a report originally titled “The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli,” originally published in 2019, Siren Associates said that about 67 percent of stateless people in the city have Lebanese mothers and 70 percent have Lebanese fathers , yet somehow they still manage to slip through the cracks of a system that ought to protect them.

The report found that in many cases stateless individuals do not have basic documents, such as birth certificates, required to prove their status, or the financial means or connections to acquire it.

Even in cases where a stateless person marries a documented citizen, their and their children’s situation is not always resolved. Under Lebanese law, if a father is stateless, his children inherit his legal status, even if their mother is a citizen.

“All my life, I have been made to feel inferior because my father is Palestinian,” 38-year-old Ahmed, whose mother is Lebanese, told Arab News. “There are so many opportunities that I don’t have, so many job fields I’m not allowed to enter; I can’t even become a taxi driver. I can’t build my own house. I have a four year old daughter and He has inherited my curse.”

Palestinians in Lebanon have long been denied state security. To save them from becoming destitute, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency provides basic services.

But Ahmed says that is not enough to get UN support, especially since the economic collapse in Lebanon began in 2019. Many Palestinians were already confined to camps, denied opportunities to travel, and barred from many forms of employment. Now they are facing even more difficult situations.

A partial solution to the problem would be to change the law to allow Lebanese women to pass on their nationality to their children and spouses.

However, such a move has been opposed by successive governments, which see granting citizenship as a valuable political tool.

The country’s leaders are often given quotas to grant citizenship as a kind of political party. Under Lebanon’s rigid sectarian system, this is always done along the lines of confession and almost always rewards powerful patrons such as businessmen, not the underprivileged.

In 2018, President Michel Aoun granted Lebanese citizenship to more than 300 people in a process criticized for its lack of transparency and allegations of bribery.

Similar allegations were leveled against Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Beri and then Prime Minister Saad Hariri, when they were also granted citizenship quotas. That year, Lebanese nationality was granted to several Syrian businessmen with ties to the regime of President Bashar Assad.

“Anybody useful to the state, whether a businessman, investor or person of good standing, and whose naturalization would be in the interest of Lebanon, is welcome,” said Gebran Basil, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and the president’s son-in-law. said at that time.

However, Basil opposes changing the law to allow Lebanese mothers to pass on their nationality to their children.

There has been strong opposition to possible moves to change the system. In late 2021, Hezbollah MP and Lebanese Labor Minister Mustafa Bayram announced plans to lift work restrictions on undocumented Palestinians and Lebanese.

The political class was angered by the announcement, forcing Bayram to make a statement saying that his “words were taken out of context” and that “what has hitherto been forbidden by law will remain the same.” “

Lina Abu-Habib, a prominent feminist and director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut, described the Lebanese government as an “outrageously patriarchal regime” because it effectively only allowed men to be citizens. admits.

“When you undermine a woman’s right to be granted nationality, you undermine a generation’s rights to social services and political participation,” she told Arab News.

“Lebanon has been persistent in denying rights. It requires more than reform; it requires changing the whole system, the whole status quo.”

The country’s political dysfunction is compounded by its economic bankruptcy. Last week, the Lebanese pound was trading at $33,000, down from 1,500 a year ago.

Meanwhile, state subsidies on essential goods such as wheat, benzene and diesel have been removed, meaning that a full tank of petrol now costs more than the average monthly wage, which would reduce inflation in real terms to just $21. Has been.

Many Lebanese now rely almost entirely on remittances sent from relatives living abroad. Dollars coming from the diaspora have long been a way to supplement an economy built on tourism. However, remittance dollars that used to be top ups are now a necessity for many people.

For the stateless with no access to funds from abroad, the situation is becoming increasingly depressing. Charitable organizations have been forced to step in where the government has been unable or unwilling to provide aid.

“We provide hygiene kits, food distribution, education, legal advice and psychosocial support,” Hassan Bahani, program manager for the Insan Association, told Arab News. “Stateless children and their parents are often victims and subject to discrimination, and we offer counseling sessions to children and their parents.”

However, donations may only be a short-term solution. Theodore Caponis, who leads the research on statelessness by Siren Associates, said the denial of proper documentation is a human rights issue that must be resolved immediately.

“Irrespective of this, this issue will continue to implicate an ever-increasing number of people in the purview of human rights and will result in an even bigger challenge for the state,” he said.

“There is an urgent need to simplify and expedite the process to settle the status of unregistered persons born to Lebanese fathers, and at the same time initiate nationwide mapping of the stateless population.”

For Khalaf, who lives in his immediate shelter near the airport, the roar of planes taking off and landing is a constant reminder of his inability to travel. To survive they have resorted to the informal labor market, sometimes selling boxes of tissues by the side of the road.

“The situation is unbearable,” he said. “Five years ago you were able to pass. NGOs had more opportunities to help people like me, neighbors also had more means to help. But now it seems that everyone can barely make a living. finds.

“Sometimes I wish I had never been born.”