As Syria charts a new course and transitional justice efforts proceed, advocates see a unique opportunity to reform the country’s nationality law and address statelessness. The post Nationality law reform: Who has the ‘right to have rights’ in the new Syria? appeared first on Syria Direct.
As Syria charts a new course and transitional justice efforts proceed, advocates see a unique opportunity to reform the country’s nationality law and address statelessness.
10 June 2026
DAMASCUS — Dana Hamila, 38, spends her days at home in Germany making soap and selling it online. Born and raised in Syria, she left in 2017 with her then-husband, who was wanted by the former regime for mandatory military service.
When the Assad regime fell in December 2024, Hamila had high hopes to return home, complete her studies in international law at Damascus University—which were disrupted by the war—and help rebuild Syria. “What binds us to this country is love. In the end, it’s a destroyed, weary country, but because we love it, we want to offer it something,” Hamila told Syria Direct.
Despite that love, and despite being born and raised in Syria, Hamila is not legally a Syrian national because, while her mother is Syrian, her father holds Tunisian nationality. Syria is one of 24 countries worldwide—14 of which are in the Middle East and North Africa—where women cannot pass their nationality on to a child or spouse on an equal basis with men.
Under the country’s 1969 Nationality Law (Legislative Decree No. 276), anyone born to a Syrian father is considered a Syrian national, while mothers can only pass on nationality under certain conditions—for example, if the father’s identity is unknown.
For Hamila, who today holds Tunisian and German citizenship, this means that she could only return and study in Syria as a foreigner, paying $5,000 in tuition fees, she said. She would then need to obtain a permit to work in Syria. With her meager income from soapmaking, she does not see a clear path home for herself.
Past efforts and campaigns to reform Syrian nationality law under the former Assad regime floundered. But with a new government in Damascus and a country charting a new course, some see a unique opportunity to address historic exclusion and widen the frame of equal citizenship to include not only the children of non-Syrian fathers, but also members of other long-denied groups.
This past March, Syria’s National Commission for Transitional Justice organized a conference, alongside the MENA Statelessness Network (Hawiati) and UN Women, to discuss reforms to the 1969 nationality law. Members of parliament were among the roughly 100 in attendance.
Syria is “at a moment of transition, with a real opportunity to address this legacy and its compounded impacts as a result of the conflict,” Ajay Madiwale, Syria Coordinator at UN Women, said at the time.
The public response to the conference was mixed, with some observers criticizing the commission for prioritizing nationality law reform amid slow progress in accountability efforts for crimes committed by the former regime. But proponents say a new nationality law is key to repairing historic injustices and ensuring reparations under any future transitional justice law are available to all.
“There are multiple pathways to justice, both judicial and non-judicial—it doesn’t end with accountability,” said Hisham Kanan, a member of Syria’s Transitional Justice Commission. Established by presidential decree last year, the body is charged with gathering evidence of Assad regime violations, pursuing accountability and compensating victims.
Roua al-Taweel, a researcher and trustee at Hawiati, pointed to “Hannah Arendt’s very famous phrase: ‘Nationality is the right to have rights’—basically, not having political recognition by the state eventually has implications for accessing civil and political rights, as well as economic, social, and cultural rights.”
Hamila feels no connection to Tunisia, where neither she nor her father has ever lived. Her father was also born to a Syrian mother, and denied nationality as a result. “Even when I traveled to Tunisia, they called us Syrians,” she told Syria Direct. “Our accent is Syrian, our customs are Syrian. I couldn’t really integrate into Tunisian society, although I tried.”
In the past, Hamila could have gained citizenship through her Syrian husband—though she could not have given it to him, if the roles were reversed. But the couple did not apply before leaving Syria because her husband was wanted by the regime, and they divorced after arriving in Germany.
“A woman feels she hasn’t been given this right—her right to choose, to have her emotional choices respected, and her decision to marry someone who isn’t a fellow citizen,” she said. “It’s the man who determines [national] affiliation—but do I belong to a man or do I belong to a homeland?”
The consequences of the war in Syria make resolving such inequalities particularly pressing. During the war, the Assad regime bombed civil registries and residents of opposition-controlled areas faced severe difficulties traveling to and registering marriages and births in regime-controlled areas, which often required security approval.
Additionally, according to UN estimates, more than 5,000 foreign fighters live in Syria, many of whom married Syrian women. These include foreign fighters belonging to the Islamic State, many of whose wives and stateless children found themselves in al-Hol camp until its recent closure.
While the existing nationality law grants citizenship to Syrian children whose father is unknown or if both parents are stateless, it has not historically been applied, al-Taweel explained.
“If the mothers were married to Syrians who disappeared or were killed during these 15 years, or if they had children resulting from connections to foreign fighters or sexual violence related to the conflict, all these women now face the difficult task of ensuring their children are recognized by the Syrian state, particularly if they weren’t born in Syria,” al-Taweel explained.
“A stateless child, or a child at risk of statelessness, will not have access to education, healthcare, eventually employment…or [even] property, all because they lack a legal status,” she added.
Kurds historically figured among the largest stateless populations in Syria—alongside Palestinians—with approximately 300,000 lacking nationality prior to 2011.
The new Syrian government has recently taken measures to restore citizenship to stateless Kurds, while the question of granting nationality to Palestinians remains controversial, as some critics argue that it would dilute their right of return to historic Palestine.
For generations of Syrian Kurds, more than 60 years of statelessness began in 1962, when a one-day government census in Hasakah province stripped around 120,000 of their citizenship. Framed as a response to the emigration of Kurds from Turkey in the preceding years, the census was part of a string of discriminatory state measures and demographic engineering policies.
The census produced two categories of stateless Syrian Kurds—ajanib, who had some identity documents, and maktoumeen al-qaid who had no documents or were not contacted. This status flowed down through the generations as children were born, compounded by the fact that Syrian women could not pass on their nationality to their husbands or children.
As former president Bashar al-Assad enacted reforms in an attempt to appease the popular uprising of 2011, he issued a decree allowing ajanib Kurds to apply for citizenship, while making no mention of the maktoumeen.
“Since the maktoumeen group has no existence at all—they have no legal presence—they didn’t enjoy any services related to Syrian citizens. No health, social, or educational services, nor any ability to work formally, no social security, no ability to own or register real estate, and difficulties even traveling within Syria,” said Izzadin Saleh, a human rights defender and Executive Director of Synergy Association for Victims (Hevdesti).
This began to change in January, when President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a decree allowing stateless Syrian Kurds inside the country to apply for citizenship. Application centers opened in April, but applicants had to be inside Syria to apply, and the initial deadline to do so expired in May.
Read more: Denied for decades, Syria’s stateless Kurds edge towards recognition
“Thousands of Kurdish families outside Syria…have no mechanism so far to apply for nationality,” Saleh explained.
Among them is Jiyan Asim, 21, a Syrian Kurdish refugee living in Turkey. Asim, her parents and grandparents are all maktoumeen. “If you want to buy a piece of land or a car, you can’t register it in your name because, basically, you don’t even have a [legal] name,” she explained.
Asim, her husband, who is also stateless, and their two young children live in the Turkish city Mardin where they have Kimlik residency—a temporary protection status—but no citizenship. Without Turkish nationality, she is unable to travel outside the province where she lives without a permit.
“I am Syrian, I just want to have nationality and rights—out of all the countries in the world, there isn’t one to take us in,” she lamented. “My husband’s family has been in Turkey for 14 years, and they are still only holding temporary ID cards.”
As soon as the security and living situations permit, she hopes to return to Syria. “I want to return to Syria as I’m a stranger here. In the end, it’s my country, my family, and my people,” Asim said. But she does not wish to do so without citizenship.
In April, Asim’s father included her name when he applied for citizenship in Syria. However, family applications can only include children under the age of 18.
The transitional justice commission’s work on changes to Syria’s nationality law are only focused on gender discrimination, Kanan said, while “the issue of stateless Kurds will be resolved on a parallel track.”
Saleh argued that Kurds’ right to Syrian nationality should be enshrined in any new nationality law. “To truly address the issue of stateless Kurds and guarantee it won’t happen again, this new law needs to establish the right to nationality as a legal right, and emphasize the point of restoring nationality to those who were stripped of it, rather than granting it” by presidential decree, he said.
“It is [also] important that people who are currently having their nationality restored can benefit from it retroactively and reclaim their previous rights that they were stripped of,” Saleh added.
The timing of the March conference on nationality law reform was strategic, Kanan explained. “This is the best moment because there is momentum to change laws in accordance with human rights,” he said. “Those who have citizenship cannot understand the importance of having nationality.”
“It’s not just about gender equality—you can’t start the transitional justice process without nationality,” he added. “How can you receive reparations from the state if you don’t have nationality?”
For those currently without nationality, “stateless people, maktoumeen children and unregistered children,” a new nationality law would mark “the first step toward them having a legal personality and becoming Syrian citizens, and consequently being included in transitional justice processes,” Saleh echoed.
“Statelessness is connected to forced displacement, disappearances, and all the other harms we speak about in transitional justice,” al-Taweel added. “By turning this page, we are starting a new chapter where the ‘New Syria’ will be one that recognizes equal citizenship…and hopefully, we move toward a more democratic and inclusive society.”
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