The research undertaken for the project Understanding statelessness in the Syrian refugee context identified the need to strengthen the capacity of organisations operating in the host countries to make effective interventions, by making information about the challenges which are specific to statelessness in the Syria displacement context more readily available.
The purpose of the Toolkit offered through this website is to fulfil that goal. It includes a collection of information and resources designed to help practitioners in the field to quickly and easily find answers to questions about statelessness in the Syria refugee context. It contains explanatory texts, factsheets, case studies and good practice examples. The material is divided into four main sections which allow the user to…
- Read up on key concepts and international legal standards relating to statelessness and forced displacement
- Learn more about who was stateless in Syria prior to the conflict and who is at risk of statelessness due to the Syrian nationality law, civil registration and documentation system
- Explore the challenges faced by stateless refugees and around protecting the right to Syrian nationality of refugees and children born in exile
- Discover more about (the risk of) statelessness among refugees living in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq
Wherever possible, there is an emphasis on practical steps that can be taken to mitigate risks. The Toolkit is designed to be of use to humanitarian staff who engage in a regular basis with refugees facing challenges to access civil registration and other important procedures for preventing statelessness and alleviating the plight of statelessness refugees. The information and resources collected in the Toolkit can also be useful to a wide range of other actors, including government officials responsible for improving civil registration systems, UN staff working on programmes and policies or front-line humanitarian actors providing various forms of direct assistance to refugees. The Toolkit is relevant both to practitioners working in the region and to those working with Syrian refugees around the world.
The Toolkit also offers a Resource Library , which contains a selection of project videos and downloads, as well as links to related reading material online. There are two dedicated training videos which offer a Q&A on some of the core issues with international and regional experts from civil society, academia and the UN. You can hear directly about the challenges and solutions from Professor Helene Lambert of Westminster University, Kerry Neal of UNICEF, Haval Abdoulhamed of Qandil in Iraq, and many others. On the downloads page, you can access a PDF version of all of the elements of this toolkit so that you can continue to use the information offline.