The Lebanese Organization of Studies and Training - LOST drafted recently a legal study about statelessness in Baalbeck- Hermel region.
Funded by the World Bank, this study includes an overview about the numbers of stateless people in the region. 950 cases were counted in less than one month through several meetings held with the region’s mokhtars and field visits in the different cities and villages of Baalbeck- Hermel.
This thorough study gives away the reasons of having unregistered births in Lebanon starting with poverty and nescience and ending with bureaucracy.
Moreover, the study deals with the serious and critical social effects of this problem since stateless people are deprived of their civil rights (Education, Medical care…), personal and political rights (marriage, travel, election…).
“So, Stateless people don’t have clear present nor clear future. They don’t legally exist” as Salah Zaiter said, the director of training at LOST.
This legal study determines in details all the legal mechanisms and procedures to follow in order to argue this problem out. Actions should be done to make this group of people registered and giving them social, economic, political and civil rights through clear legal steps and in the necessary competent courts.
