MARCH’S LEGAL SUPPORT APPROACH & FIGHT AGAINST LEBANESE STATELESSNESS

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

REVAMPING LEBANON’S CIVIL STATUS INFRASTRUCTURE THROUGH AUTOMATION

. An estimated 27,000 people born of Lebanese fathers are stateless in Lebanon because their births were not registered. This number is expected to double by the year 2035. . . . In partnership with MARCH’s work with the communities of Beb El Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen has exposed us to a pool of socio-economic issues ravaging Tripoli’s most marginalized areas. Through our interactions with the locals, we realized that a substantial number of individuals were stateless. This refers to the fact that they were not registered at birth, leaving to them to face a lifetime of obstacles. Being invisible in the eyes of the State meant they did not have access to basic human dignities and were deprived of fundamental services such as healthcare, a formal education and employment opportunities. This -coupled with a number of different elements- isolated these groups and jeopardized their quality of life which in turn generated a feeling of alienation and hopelessness amongst them. Although our rehabilitation and reintegration program allowed us to get in close proximity to people affected by statelessness, our understanding of its implications was quite limited. There was very little information available on the topic and no official statics had ever been extracted or released by the government. This posed a grave challenge as it hindered our ability to create long-term sustainable impact. In spite of civil society organizations’ efforts to bridge the existent gaps and build the capacities of these vulnerable persons to give them a chance at a better future, certain factors such as statelessness and unclean records remained quite problematic. Therefore, MARCH decided to conduct a baseline assessment to better comprehend the phenomenon and manufacture tools to counter it. Therefore, we partnered up with Siren Associates to produce a report that offers a deep dive into statelessness in Tripoli and that compiles, analyzes and presents accurate and reliable data on the matter. The study focused on individuals of Lebanese decent and provided an overview of the local context. The research showed some unsettling numbers such as the fact that 58% of Tripoli’s stateless population is unemployed and 1300 individuals have a Lebanese father. Furthermore, upon taking a closer look at births registration processes in place, we understood that a large portion of the problem came from bureaucratic lag and complexities. Finally, the report was also supplemented with a set of policy recommendations that would help move towards the detection, reduction, protection and prevention of stateless persons and support the government in sculpting a more efficient and proactive road-map. Following the completion of the above-mentioned report, we proceeded to share our findings with the relevant governing institutions (e.g. the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities and the Ministry of Justice). We concluded that the solution would be to facilitate the registration process. To that end, we proceeded to develop an automation system that would help optimize the workflow within the Personal Status Directorate. This would ultimately allow to solve pending cases of nationality whilst simultaneously facilitating future registrations. Ultimately, such an infrastructure would promote the efficiency and transparency of the administrative mechanisms. Today, the team has begun taking the first step towards installing this system at civil status offices nationwide thus connecting them beyond geographic boundaries.

افتتاح مركز بيروت الاقليمي للدفاع المدني في منطقة الكولا

LNASHRA تم الاحتفال بافتتاح مركز الدّفاع المدني الإقليميّ بحلّته الجديدة في حضور مدير العام الدّفاع المدني العميد ريمون خطار، ممثلا وزيرة الداخلية والبلديات في حكومة تصريف الأعمال السيدة ريا الحسن، سفير بريطانيا في لبنان الأستاذ كريس رامبلينغ، رئيسة جمعيّة “مارش” ليا بارودي وعناصر من الدفاع المدنيّ بالإضافة الى شخصيّات أخرى بارزة مثل الممثل والمخرج جورج خبّاز. أنجزت عمليّة إعادة التأهيل على أيد شبانٍ وشابات المهمشين والمنسيّين من مختلف أرجاء بيروت أبرزها مناطق المدينة الرياضية، الشياح وطريق الجديدة. وأطلقت الجمعيّة هذا البرنامج ضمن نطاق مبادرة “العمل الجماعيّ من أجل الوطن” حيث اختارت التعاون مع الدفاع المدنيّ اللبنانيّ لما تمثله هذه المؤسسة من مبادئ. فإن العيش المشترك، التضحية والولاء للوطن عناوين أساسيّة في رسالة الدفاع المدنيّ تتجسد أيضاً في عمل مارش. تخلّل الحفل فيلم وثائقيّ جسّد روح المشروع وعرّف الحاضرين على بعض الشّباب الّذين شاركوا في البرنامج. كما قام الضيوف بجولة على المبنى وتعرّفوا على أبرز ملامحه الجديدة. أحيت الإفتتاح فرقة الدفاع المدنيّ بالإضافة إلى ألحان شبّان من “هنا بيروت”- مركز مارش الثقافيّ- مضيفين لمسة موسيقيّة رائعة

PLIGHT OF THE RIGHTLESS

Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli. “This report provides an analysis of statelessness among people of Lebanese decent in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. It starts with an overview of the local context, then introduces statelessness as a global concept along with the relevant international conventions and best practices to solving it around the world. A historical and legal review of statelessness in Lebanon follows. The situation of stateless people of Lebanese origin in Tripoli is then assessed through reviewing quantitative survey data as well as insights from key informant interviews. Lastly, the report concludes with a section on policy recommendations.”