As part of the MARCH mission to promote the resilience of youth within its center and foster a more coherent and sustainable peace-building process, it offers legal support in Tripoli. This support is focused on providing legal services and awareness sessions aimed at addressing the hardships that have deprived young people of their civil rights, freedom of movement, educational opportunities, and even basic rights such as obtaining a passport or applying for a job.
Through these legal services, MARCH successfully redirects the trajectory of these young lives away from conflict and seeking identity in extremist groups. By reinstating trust in governmental institutions and legal systems, these youths are less likely to resort to self-protection mechanisms, bear arms, or resort to conflict out of economic disparity. Having said that MARCH’s legal department has embarked on a multifaceted approach:
Raising Awareness: MARCH conducts group awareness sessions on various legal topics, such as civil rights and the legal mechanism of birth registration, ensuring that these youths understand their rights and the role of the legal institutions.
Providing Counseling Sessions: MARCH provides individualized counseling sessions and personalized guidance for its youth to comprehend their legal conditions and research several case studies. MARCH also extends legal representation for cases that require court intervention.
Providing Legal Assistance and Representation: MARCH aids beneficiaries in reintegrating into society and securing their human rights that are governed by local laws and international treaties through assisting and representing the beneficiaries in civil and military courts.
Tackling the Dilemma of the Lebanese Statelessness: An Invisible Crisis
MARCH’s engagement in Tripoli’s Beb El Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods brought to light another pressing issue: Lebanese statelessness.
Many of the local youths participating in MARCH’s programs were found to be stateless – individuals from Lebanese fathers who were not registered at birth due to several reasons such as their parents were not able to register them within the legal timeline or their fathers being away due to battles or war and thus, they remain unrecognized by the government. This lack of official documentation severely limits their access to fundamental rights and services, including education, healthcare, and employment, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation such as human trafficking.
- Guide to Avoid Statelessness and Social Media Campaigns:
As part of an initiative to reduce the number of Lebanese unregistered children and combat Lebanese statelessness, March created a comprehensive guide booklet containing legal information and procedures on birth registration. This endeavor seeks to raise awareness and address the issue, especially among individuals born to a Lebanese father but not registered. Concurrently, MARCH’s commitment extends to conducting social media campaigns to elucidate the definition, reasons, statistics, challenges, recommendations, and all aspects related to this phenomenon. These campaigns also aim to distinguish between statelessness in general and Lebanese statelessness.
- Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli: Plight of the Rightless
Through a data-driven approach, MARCH recognized the scarcity of reliable data within governmental institutions and initiated a comprehensive field study on statelessness in Tripoli in collaboration with the Siren Association aiming to determine the size of the problem and discern its causes, measure its effects on individuals and their families and determine who is at risk of statelessness, to identify and deploy the adequate projects that can help reduce and prevent this phenomenon as well as protect the Lebanese stateless in Tripoli. This research supported MARCH’s deep-rooted trust in the community and led to enlightening findings.
These findings were then shared with key entities including the Ministry of Interior and
Municipalities and the Ministry of Justice, to initiate systemic reforms to tackle the issue of statelessness.
- Streamlining Registration Process: Automation System:
MARCH developed an automated system for the personal status departments of the Ministry of Interior that would help facilitate bureaucratic processes related to nationalization and registration. The installed and configured server operates as an automated workflow for personal status, allowing monitoring procedures and requests, their status, and duration, and retrieving copies of supporting documents.
This innovative system guarantees the prevention of any loss, delay, oversight, or neglect of files, and will alleviate the bureaucratic deadlock that has caused many challenges in the registration process.
- Drafting a law on granting a one-year time limit to register birth certificates for legitimate Lebanese children that were not declared within one year from their date of birth:
MARCH is working on a draft law in collaboration with the General Directorate of Personal Status at the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities to streamline the registration of Lebanese Stateless individuals born to Lebanese fathers.
These efforts resulted in a successful high-level consultative meeting titled “Lebanese Stateless: Challenges and Solutions.”
The meeting brought together several Members of Parliament, ambassadors, experts, policymakers, judges, lawyers, and representatives from various local and international organizations to collectively address the Lebanese statelessness issue.
Lastly, MARCH’s work stands as a testament to the power of grassroots initiatives in transforming societies. Through legal support and Lebanese statelessness-focused efforts, many beneficiaries, particularly ex-rival fighters, have had their records cleaned, granting them access to their civil rights and the freedom to move freely without constraint at checkpoints, and removing barriers to socio-economic reintegration, especially in the workforce. This transformation has created new opportunities for reintegration into society, empowering them to pursue brighter futures with optimism and confidence. By facilitating their journey towards legal recognition and empowerment, we are paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable society.
