Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Iraq

Posted on 21 October 2022 (21 October 2022) by Jan Brulc

Selwa (left), with her daughters, holding her newly issued Iraqi ID card at their home in Basra, Iraq. So far, four members of the family have been granted nationality, while the process for their remaining eight children is still ongoing. ; Southern Iraq is home to around 160,000 members of the Bidoon community, who arrived in large numbers from Kuwait following the 1991 Gulf War. Short for bidoon jinsiya (‘without nationality’ in Arabic), they are a stateless minority who mostly live on the margins of society, with no identity documents or access to basic services including education and health care. With funding from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, Iraqi NGO Mercy Hands has been working since 2017 to help members of the estimated 30,000-strong Bidoon community around the southern city of Basra to acquire Iraqi nationality and identity papers. Its small team of lawyers has so far helped some 500 families to gain their nationality, a legal process that can take up to a year. As citizens they are able to move around freely without fear of being caught without papers, access medical treatment and register their children for school.

Funded by

Initiative led by

The European Network on Statelessness (ENS) is a civil society alliance of over 170 organisations and individual experts in 41 countries. We are committed to ending statelessness and ensuring that everyone living in Europe without a nationality can access the rights they are entitled to under international law.

info@statelessness.eu