1994 Lebanese naturalisation decree

The naturalization of persons excluded from Lebanese nationality is a debate as old as the creation of Lebanese nationality, by the law of January 15, 1925, defined by the decree 15/S of the High Commissioner Maurice Sarrail. While several naturalizations have taken place, particularly in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, involving several thousand people, the 1994 naturalization decree is by far the most important in Lebanon's recent history.

The historical context

At the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, Syria, which had occupied large parts of Lebanese territory since its military intervention in June 1976, maintained its troops throughout Lebanon, with the exception of Israeli-occupied South Lebanon.

Following the signing of the 1989 Taif Agreement, Syria exerted extensive political control over the post-war Lebanese political authorities. This Syrian control over Lebanese internal affairs was contested by a majority of the Christian political class.

In order to give democratic legitimacy to their occupation of Lebanon, the Syrian authorities decided to hold the legislative elections, initially planned for 1994, between the end of August and the beginning of September 1992. An electoral law was passed, modifying the division of the electoral districts in order to favor the Lebanese political parties that were clients of Damascus. The 1992 election was massively contested and boycotted, particularly by the Christian electorate. According to official figures, only 29% of the Lebanese electorate went to the polls, and only 13% of the Christian electorate participated in the vote.

For fear that the democratic legitimacy of the next legislative elections, scheduled for 1996, would be tainted by an equally high abstention rate, consideration was given to increasing the size of the Lebanese electorate by ensuring that a large proportion of the voters belonged to political parties supporting Syrian hegemony in Lebanon.

Shortly after the appointment of Rafik Hariri as President of the Council in 1992, a committee was set up to implement the naturalization of thousands of people. It was headed by the then Minister of the Interior, Bechara Merhej, and included the Director of General Security and the Director of Personal Status. In July 1993, the committee published an application form for Lebanese nationality, available throughout the Lebanese territory through the Mukhtars. The last local elections, which allow the election of municipal councils and Mukhtars, were held in 1967. This means that the Mukhtars, the administrative authority in charge of personal affairs in Lebanon, who oversee these application forms for Lebanese nationality, were elected in 1967, or were appointed by the central government in the event of a vacancy in the position of elected official, making them a body of officials with little independence.

The form must be filled out by individuals who wish to acquire Lebanese nationality, including details that confirm their connection to Lebanon: parentage, property, residence, education, holding of Lebanese diplomas, etc. Once the form is completed, it is the role of the General Security to conduct a thorough investigation on the validity of the application and the applicant's background.

The signing of the naturalization decree, no. 5247, was announced by the President of the Council Rafic Hariri, on June 21, 1994, during a general policy debate before the Chamber of Deputies. It was signed by the President of the Council, the President of the Republic Elias Hraoui and the Minister of Interior Bechara Merhej, but was not discussed in the Council of Ministers.

The announcement of the signing of this decree caused an outcry, several Maronite personalities opposed to it, as Nehmetallah Abi Nasr, then Secretary General of the Maronite League, who denounced an imbalance in favor of Muslims. The government remains evasive on the number of people concerned by this mass naturalization, the figures vary between 100,000 and 150,000 individuals according to sources. The situation is made particularly unclear by the fact that some names of these new naturalized are accompanied by vague mention, such as "family" or "and wife and children", without precise figures.

The decree n°5247 is published in the Official Gazette n°26 of June 30, 1994, whose annex n°2 specifies that it grants the Lebanese nationality to 88 278 persons, and 39 460 families are added to the Lebanese population. The decree does not list the persons born after 1977, since they are minors at the time of publication, if we add these minors, the number of naturalized persons amounts to 157,216.

Estimates of the number of naturalized persons

Several estimates, contradictory, exist as to the number of persons naturalized by decree n°5247. Simon Haddad gives the figure of 400,000 naturalized, which seems to be a high estimate. Eric Verdeil, in an article on voting in Lebanon, speaks of the naturalization of "about 95,000 voters", with the main objective of regulating the situation of nomadic populations that remained stateless. The report of the Lebanese NGO MARCH Lebanon puts forward the number of 202,527 naturalized in 1994.

Several groups living in Lebanon, stateless or foreigners who already had a nationality, were granted Lebanese nationality thanks to decree n°5247.

Holders of the status "Qayd ad-Dars".

The "Under Study" status, or "jinsiyya qayd ad-dars" (جنسية قيد الدرس) in Arabic, was created in the early 1960s by the Lebanese General Security services, in order to give legal status to people who had been counted as "foreigners" in the 1932 census. They had been excluded from Lebanese nationality and declared of "undetermined nationality".

Decree no. 5247 was signed with the stated objective of regularizing the legal status of those excluded from Lebanese nationality. These stateless persons had several different statuses, and among them, 32,564 persons carrying "Qayd ad-Dars" cards were naturalized by this decree.

The Alawites of Tripoli

The Alawite community is historically present in Lebanon, but its settlement dates back to the nineteenth century, when several waves of Alawites left rural Syria to settle in the north of present-day Lebanon. These waves accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s, with the number of Alawites rising to 20,000. They are often poorly educated workers of rural origin, often under twenty years of age. The vast majority of Syrian Alawites who emigrated to Lebanon, which is very close to the Syrian regime, were naturalized thanks to Decree No. 5247 of 1994. Elisabeth Picard puts forward the figure of "several tens of thousands", to the point where they "represent nearly 17% of the registered electorate in Tripoli in the 1996 legislative elections". mainly concentrated in the district of Jabal Mohsen. Thus, in the 2018 study by UN-Habitat and UNICEF Lebanon, out of a total of 13,629 inhabitants counted in Jabal Mohsen, more than 94.1% of the population was Lebanese, and only 5% had Syrian nationality .

The residents of the seven villages and their descendants

The residents of the "seven Shia villages", as well as their descendants, are also among the naturalized in 1994. These people held Lebanese nationality between 1921 and 1926, before losing it for Palestinian nationality, following changes in the border between the State of Greater Lebanon and Mandatory Palestine. The inhabitants of these villages located on the Israeli-Lebanese border fled en masse to southern Lebanon during the first Arab-Israeli war. For a long time, they were excluded from Lebanese nationality, despite the demands of several Shia political groups such as the Amal Movement, before being naturalized by Decree No. 5247. According to Simon Haddad, 27,000 residents of the seven Shia villages and their descendants were naturalized, Guita Hourani gives their exact number as 25,071.

Palestinian refugees

Several Palestinian refugees, who fled the 1948 or 1967 wars by taking refuge in Lebanon, were naturalized thanks to this decree. Souheil El-Natour estimates their number at 35,000, among whom are inhabitants of the seven Shia villages (see above). Sunni Palestinians (the majority denomination among this population), were also naturalized in 1995, perhaps to balance the denominational ratio between Shia and Sunnis, according to Simon Haddad. The last Christian Palestinian refugees who had not yet obtained Lebanese nationality were naturalized at this time, under pressure from the Maronite political class.

The government of Rafic Hariri defended itself for having granted Lebanese nationality to Palestinian refugees through this decree, a decision that provoked a strong protest reaction, particularly in Christian circles, who saw it as a desire to increase the share of Muslims (Shia and Sunnis) in the Lebanese electorate. Guita Hourani estimates that up to 60,000 Palestinian refugees were naturalized in 1994.

Eric Verdeil argues that in "South Lebanon and north of Tripoli, naturalizations seem to correspond to those of Palestinians" as these two regions concentrate many large Palestinian camps: Ain el-Helweh, the largest in Lebanon, Mieh Mieh, Burj el-Shemali, el-Buss and Rachidiye in the south; Nahr el-Bared and Beddaoui in the north.

Armenians

According to Eric Verdeil, many Armenian refugees from Anatolia, who had fled the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, were only naturalized in 1994. They were concentrated in Beirut and Tripoli, which explains a significant proportion of the number of naturalized voters registered for the 1996 legislative elections.

The Arabs of Wadi Khaled

This population of Bedouin origin, located on the border between Lebanon and Syria, escaped the census operations of the French authorities in 1921 and 1932, and were therefore excluded from Lebanese nationality. The overwhelming majority of the Arabs of Wadi Khaled thus obtained the naturalization they had been seeking since the 1950s and 1960s, thanks to Decree No. 5247 . However, several oversights in the application of this decree have left "a few hundred" people in their stateless status until today.

The Bedouins

The Bedouins, because they could not prove that they were "normally" resident in the territory of Greater Lebanon during the various population censuses, since they moved seasonally between the Bekaa plain and Syria, were also excluded from Lebanese nationality. Like the Bedouins of Wadi Khaled, they were stateless for a long time, until they were subject to massive naturalization thanks to decree no. 5247 . The al-Hrouk tribe, settled around the village of Kfar Zabad - in particular in the informal village of Faour - was largely naturalized at that time. This is why the share of naturalized people represented up to 17% of the registered voters in the 1996 legislative elections in the municipality of Kfar Zabad.

The Turkmens

In the same way as the Bedouins, the Turkmens were not registered during the censuses of the French Mandate, and only obtained Lebanese nationality in 1994 thanks to decree no. 5247. Their late naturalization explains why a number of villages with a majority (or even a majority) of Turkmen inhabitants, especially those located around the city of Baalbek, are not recognized as municipalities by the Lebanese authorities. Thus, the villages of Sheymiye, Nananiye, Addus, Hadidiye do not have a Mukhtar. In the absence of a reliable census, the number of Turkmens living in Lebanon is not known (some estimates vary between 18,500 and 40,000 people), nor is it known how many of them were naturalized in 1994.

Kurds

Many people from Anatolia, including Kurds but also Arabic-speaking tribes (whom an ORSAM report groups together under the term "Mardinites", in reference to the province of Mardin, from which they originate) who call themselves "Muhallamis", fled the consequences of the fall of the Ottoman Empire to take refuge in Lebanon. Excluded from Lebanese nationality because they were Muslims, these refugees, unlike the Christian refugees from Anatolia, remained stateless for a long time. If some naturalizations, relatively limited, took place in the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of this population was naturalized thanks to the decree n°5247 .

The Doms

A population that has also remained nomadic for a long time, the Doms suffer from numerous forms of discrimination in Lebanon, as well as extreme marginalization. This has notably taken the form of statelessness, the Doms being excluded from Lebanese citizenship since the creation of the State of Greater Lebanon. Most of them were naturalized thanks to the decree n°5247 . Many of the Doms had obtained the status of "Qayd ad-Dars" in the 1960s, and were finally fully naturalized in 1994, although even today there are still up to 20% of the Dom population who do not have a nationality in Lebanon.  

Electoral manipulation

The naturalized citizens of 1994, at least two-thirds of whom were Muslims, represented a significant part of the Lebanese electorate. These new voters, clientelized by the political leaders, made it possible to strengthen certain candidates in the constituencies where they were voting for the first time, during the legislative elections of 1996.

Elisabeth Picard explains that "the 1994 naturalization decision [...] also has a strategic dimension on the part of Syrian officers who manage the Lebanese political scene in the aftermath of the civil war. Armed with their new civic rights, the new Lebanese from Wadi Khaled are registered in large numbers in the electoral districts of Matn (central Lebanon) where they constitute up to 35% of the voters. Driven by the Syrian army and duly rewarded, they came to vote in the 1996 legislative elections and tipped the balance in favor of the lists sponsored by the Minister of the Interior Michel al-Murr, a client of Damascus since 1985".

The naturalized represent up to 35% of those registered on the electoral lists of Matn for the 1996 legislative elections. While it is not excluded that Syriacs, Armenians and Christians originating from Syria are part of these naturalized people, the majority are in fact former nomadic Muslim populations. Their vote is instrumentalized and their village of registration (where they vote) does not always seem to correspond to their village of origin. These voters are therefore sent to their village of registration, where their vote has a definite impact on the results of the elections. Thus, in Matn, where the opposition to Syrian hegemony is well established (mostly Maronite Christians, Aounists or Lebanese Forces), the 1996 legislative elections brought to parliament deputies close to Michel al-Murr (himself re-elected in Matn), then Minister of the Interior and openly supportive of Hafez al-Assad's regime in the 1990s.  

The appeal of the Maronite League

On August 26, 1994, the Maronite League presented an appeal for the annulment of decree n°5247 before the Council of State (Majlis Shura al-Dawla), the highest jurisdiction in the Lebanese judicial system. Several reasons are given, this mass naturalization is presented as unconstitutional because it grants Lebanese nationality to people who had no right to acquire it, such as Palestinian refugees. Several irregularities are also denounced, such as the lack of reliable and strict criteria for the conditions to benefit from the effects of this decree. Finally, the denominational and demographic imbalance induced by this naturalization of tens of thousands of people, the Maronites then pose as the protectors and defenders of the "Lebanese formula".

The Council of State did not render decision n°484 until seven years later, on July 5, 2003. It encouraged the Ministry of the Interior to study on a case-by-case basis the naturalizations whose legitimacy was contested, recognizing that many people naturalized in 1994 should not have obtained Lebanese nationality. The verdict of the Council of State "is not issued with obligations to the Lebanese state, since its verdicts are not enforced by compulsion, but are left to the goodwill of the state", which strongly limits its scope.

This decision was at the origin of two decrees to revoke the Lebanese nationality of some naturalized citizens of 1994 (who already held Syrian, Armenian, Turkish or Egyptian nationality), signed in 2011 by President of the Republic Michel Suleiman (2008-2014), whose prerogative it is .

Consequences on statelessness in Lebanon

While the naturalization decree has led to the naturalization of tens of thousands of Lebanese stateless persons, its implementation has not put a definitive end to this phenomenon in Lebanon, quite the contrary.

First, the reduction (let alone the elimination) of statelessness does not seem to be the main objective of Decree 5247. If this text "has a humanitarian character", it responds above all to the strategies of the Syrian officers who manage the Lebanese political scene. A senior official in the Future Movement, who responded to an interview with Guita Hourani, admits that this decision is entirely political and electoral. This is reflected in the figures, as stateless persons represent only 36% of the total number of naturalized persons.

Several populations were promised Lebanese nationality in 1994, such as the Arabs of Wadi Khaled or the Bedouins of the Abu 'Eid tribe, and have indeed obtained it thanks to the decree. Their children, minors at the time of the signing of the decree, were supposed to receive it too, according to some accounts, but in fact never obtained it. They remain stateless to this day, while naturalization procedures are extremely complicated, long and expensive for stateless people who choose to present their case to justice.  

If 32,564 "Qayd ad-Dars" cardholders were naturalized thanks to the 1994 decree, many others were not able to obtain Lebanese nationality. Thus, there would be between 18,000 and 24,000 Lebanese stateless people still living with the status "Under consideration" after the 1994 naturalization decree, according to Samira Trad, head of the legal support program for stateless people at the Lebanese NGO Frontiers Ruwad . As this status is hereditary and passed on from father to children, the number of people "Under consideration" has continued to increase until today without the Lebanese authorities taking up the issue. The decree n°5247 only partially solves the issue of the people "Under consideration", since only those who had filled in an application form for Lebanese nationality were naturalized. The people "under consideration" who did not apply are still waiting for the administration to study their case.

As decree n°5247 is particularly controversial, the nationality of those naturalized in 1994 is often questioned or even contested. Thus, many of these naturalized persons found themselves unable to register their children born after their naturalization. Among the respondents of the MARCH Lebanon survey on stateless persons in Tripoli, about 30% of those whose births had not been registered were born to a father naturalized in 1994. However, the decision n°484 of the State Council gives the right to the children of naturalized in 1994 to be registered as Lebanese citizens. This decision was reinforced and confirmed by the decision n°13 of the Court of Cassation, dated February 27, 2014, which grants Lebanese nationality to the child of a father naturalized in 1994 .

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