Written by Rima Youssef
Translated by Daisy Khalil

NNA - Some “Lebanese”, like it or not, are born and, years later, die without an official proof whatsoever of their existence. They are, in principle, born from a Lebanese mother and father, yet they do not “exist” as they remain deprived of their official and religious registration record.

Unregistered people, are they born or not? The state is completely overlooking them, although it had randomly "distributed" the Lebanese nationality, 20 years ago, yet failed to register Lebanese children whose parents had not recorded them ever born, perhaps out of negligence or irresponsibility or even fear.

Why not, if "the parents eat sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge," as Jesus said more than 2000 years ago.

Most of them have turned, due to their unidentified status, into figures in the judicial dossiers and even in prisons’ records. It is hard to determine their number as they languish under the burden of the loss of their identification papers.

They trail on in society, deprived of their civil rights, and die before they could confirm that they have ever existed.

Individuals control their livelihood conditions, along with “ancient” laws that are still unimproved for the sake of never-ending political and social accounts.

That is the miserable story of the unregistered Lebanese citizens. Considered so is every person or child who does not carry identity papers or official documents determining his identity or his nationality.

In that case, the person is prohibited from exercising his rights and duties like any other.

Failing to register the child within the legal time limit specified within a year after his birth would make the child nationality-deprived, despite the fact that his parents carry the Lebanese nationality and their marriage is totally legal.

And as a consequence of this unacceptable and inhumane status, the Head of Coordinating Bodies established to protect the rights of children in Lebanon, lawyer Alice Kairuz Sleiman, formed a committee addressing conditions of Lebanese children deprived of registration at birth.

In an interview with the National News Agency, Sleiman argued that "we have an umbrella which is the International Convention on the Rights of Children which was issued back in 1989 and approved by Lebanon in 1991, hence became within the Lebanese laws system. We, as coordinating bodies, have a work program which aims to transfer materials from paper to reality, so we worked first on legitimizing the laws related to children."

"We started from that point and we had consultations with the concerned bodies and we all agreed, back in 2012, to form a committee to address the situation of unregistered Lebanese children under the age of 18 years old," Sleiman went on.

She confirmed accordingly that the Committee had both an official and a civil aspect.

"Therein lies its importance because it includes representatives from the Ministries of Justice, Health, Interior, Social Affairs, Education and Information, as well as from the Bar Association, the Physicians' Order, hospitals, mayors' unions, security forces and civil associations," she added, affirming that the main goal is to raise awareness among people and within society, so as to address this critical dossier.

Sleiman explained that "the reasons behind parents’ non-registration of their children in official circles could either be a disagreement between spouses or if the father had left his wife while pregnant, negligence or even lack of filiation evidence."

She noted that failing to register the child within the year-limit after his birth would require a lawsuit before the civil magistrate to register him later on, in addition to DNA tests.

"Our commission is concerned with helping the parents acquire secure legal aid and work on reducing the price of DNA testing," she confirmed, noting that all the Lebanese regions will be combed so as to have the official unregistered children’s count.

She stressed that "the Commission's role is, first and foremost, to raise awareness so that what happened in the past won’t be repeated."

"This awareness will reach parents, the community and hospitals," Sleiman continued, shedding light on the importance of cooperation with the Health Ministry to establish a record of the registration mechanism in circles.

She pointed out that the Commission called for a conference on unregistered Lebanese children on Wednesday November 6 at the House of the Lawyer, to announce the development of a legal study to review the civil status law issued in 1951.

For her part, the "World Vision Organization" official, Sana Maalouf, said in an interview for the National News Agency that her work revolved around children and means to protect them.

"We conducted a survey and found out that the number of children at risk was huge. Most of those children are in Akkar, Nabaa and some areas of the Bekaa," she explained, adding that the association managed to provide funding to detect this problem and track its dangerous impacts on generations.

"We visited more than 100 unregistered people and we listened to their complaints and their pending issues. They suffer psychological, physical and moral problems," Maalouf said regrettably, stressing the importance of alertness at the level of registration of children at birth and the need for certificates from the hospital.

Maalouf finally wished on the legislative authority to consider their situation and the need to render them legal citizens.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" and the Commission to address conditions of Lebanese unregistered children began its journey in the hope that it can, one day, end their suffering with the help of the concerned Ministries and the Parliament.

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