Nationality Campaign rebuffs the proposed bill to regain nationality

My Nationality is a Right for Me and My Family Campaign announced in a press conference held yesterday at the Bar Association premises in Beirut its rejection of a draft law petition that will grant the nationality to descendants of Lebanese origin. The Campaign noted that this law petition which comes as a result of an agreement between Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea and Tayyar representative Gebran Bassil is both discriminatory and sectarian. Panelists warned that the said law will once again deprive women of their rights to full citizenship. The panelists went on to say that the proposed law is only recognizing male blood lineage and is thus depriving both resident and immigrant women from their rights. In countering the argument based demographic imbalances; the Campaign rejected that argument noting that such an argument applies equally to both women and men marriages. Furthermore, the campaign called for a new social contract that will guarantee equality to all citizens. Finally, it appealed to officials to amend the projected nationality law to ensure gender equality. On the same subject, the Campaign recently produced a report in partnership with the Equality without Reservation Campaign and the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development and Peace in which it condemned the ministerial committee’s rejection two years ago to amend the nationality law based on unjustified grounds and in clear breach of international conventions and agreements. Furthermore, the report which was submitted to the Universal Periodical Review for Human Rights, noted, that the statistics presented at the time did not truly demonstrate the deepening of demographic confessional imbalances, adding that the demands of women’s associations for right to citizenship and equality was distorted then replaced by demands for social services. To recall, since Lebanon’s submission to the Universal Periodical Review March 2011 at the sixteenth session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva to date, there has been no progress as per achieving equality in the nationality law, at the time the HRC recommendation on this matter was turned down. (An Nahar, As Safir, Al Diyar and Al Akhbar April 17, 2015)