Lebanese Women’s hardship as a result of their inability to transmit nationality

In its issue of last Saturday, l’Orient le Jour highlighted the problems facing Lebanese women married to non-nationals and who cannot transmit their nationality to their family though they lived and grew up in Lebanon.   The newspaper spoke with 49 year old Ghada, divorced from her Syrian ex-husband and who lives with her three children near the stadium in Beirut.  Ghada who is a member of an association seeking to change the current nationality law, spoke about the difficulties she faces especially since she had to travel to Lattakeyh, despite the war in Syria, to renew her children’s identity papers.  Ghada noted that her children face many a hurdle especially since they could not find a job and thus had to leave to Sweden via illegal means.  If her children fail to enter Sweden, they are not even able to return to Lebanon in view of the recent refugee crisis.  According to Ghada, there are 90000 such cases in Lebanon of whom, only 180 are Christians.  Ghada says that if demographic concerns are behind this discrimination, she will accept to be treated as a second class citizen so that her children can have a nationality without the right to vote.  Ghada also said that she sent a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gibran Bassil, following his call for immigrants to claim their Lebanese citizenship, and in which she told the Minister that immigrants willingly waived their nationality and left the country.  Why then, should their citizenship be reinstated whilst Lebanese women married to foreigners are not given this right.  Ghada noted that she will continue to struggle until she reaches her objective. (L’Orient le Jour, February 18th, 2017)