Urgent Call to allow Forced Exiled Syrians Passports

The problems of Syrian Forced exiles obtaining passports have returned, standing in the face of their needs. For the Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) has recently received tens of complaints from Syrian citizens living in neighbouring and non-neighbouring Arab countries, complaining of the insuperably difficult conditions laid down by Syrian embassies to obtain passports. In few cases, those applying for passports have been able to fulfil these conditions, except that they were not given passports.

The Syrian embassies and consulates have demanded from applicants that they must issue a copy of their civil register (extended birth certificate) obtained from their province’s civil register. During the past 5 years, many exiled Syrian citizens managed to gain these documents through their families and relatives in Syria. However, SHRC has learnt that towards the end of 2009, a decree issued by the security services deemed that it is forbidden to issue a copy of civil register or any family document for any forced exiled citizen, to the extent that lists with thousands of names were published in every province, and civil registers have been warned of issuing documents via relatives.

Since the beginning of the current year, applying for a Syrian passport via embassies and consulates has become a very difficult journey as the embassies require a document (copy of the civil register), whilst the applicant is unable and forbidden from obtaining the required documents from the civil register. And in special cases in which a few applicants have been able to obtain the documents, they were refused a passport due to statements stamped on the document such as: forbidden from his civil rights or he is required to re-visit the military intelligence.

SHRC considers this action a clear regression of decree number 17 issued from the office of the foreign minister on 17/3/2005, which allows passports to be issued to all Syrian citizens outside of the country regardless of the reasons which had initially stopped them from doing so. Acknowledging the legal right of every citizen and giving them the documents requires which prove their identity is a right given by the Syrian constitution.

SHRC requests that all difficulties and complexities which are refusing Syrian citizens passports and the registration of their newborn children in the civil register to be stopped immediately, and calls upon the President Bashar al-Asad to begin a fair initiative which will end the ordeal of thousands of Forced exiled Syrians whose years of exile have reached thirty years and yet their guarantee of peaceful return to their family and country has not been provided.

Syrian Human Rights Committee
29/11/2010