Crisis of Forced Exiles Increases following the Prohibition of Registering their Newborn

Forced Syrian exiles are facing a paramount humanitarian problem in their countries of exile. For many of the Syrian embassies, which supposedly cares for its Syrian citizens, are refusing to provide them with basic services without which they cannot continue. Many Syrians cannot register their children’s birth as the embassy refuses this due to orders from the Syrian security apparatus, and requests of them that they travel to Syria and register there (in the civil register). As a result they are unable to obtain a passport for their newborn. In fact, many fathers of the second generation of exiles are not registered within the civil register as the embassies and consulates refused to register them based on orders which told them to do so.
This issue has become breeding ground for the corrupt and greedy, and is used to manipulate and scare those who are in dire need. A Forced exiled Syrian wrote to the Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) that one intermediary at a Syrian embassy requested 16000 American Dollars in order to register his children and provide them with passports.
This complex issue of refusing to provide documents which proves and legitimises the legal Syrian citizen, has driven many in the past to purchase passports from any other direction. Currently, it is driving most to migrate and seek refuge in the West- despite the difficulties and dangers this imposes- in order to guarantee that someone will legitimise the identity of their children and that they will obtain citizenship of another country.
No crime has been committed by these citizens who are being deprived of the most basic of rights, except that they are the children or grandchildren of exiles who were forced to flee Syria in the early 1980s due to political and humanitarian reasons which are not new to the one who is aware of the issues within Syria. SHRC calls upon the Syrian authorities and President Bashar al-Asad to solve this issue through allowing exiled Syrians their rights to register their children in the civil register and obtain the documents which allow them to continue their lives and return safely and fairly to their country.
Syrian Human Rights Committee

30/11/2010