Maha Mamo; Looking for a country to love me

Nisaa FM:- As a child, Maha Mamo wasn’t allowed to go on school trips outside of Lebanon. When the other children left on buses to Syria or Jordan, she remained behind. And even though she was one of the best at basketball, she could never represent her country in competitions. Why? Because she didn’t have a nationality. Maha is stateless. This situation arose from a web of restrictive laws and practices on nationality in the two countries she had ties to: Syria and Lebanon.

Maha’s parents are Syrian nationals of different faiths; her father is Christian and her mother Muslim. Because these mixed-faith marriages are not recognized in Syria, Maha’s parents fled to Lebanon, which is where Maha and her siblings were born.

As Maha’s father is Syrian, according to the Syrian nationality law, she should have been recognized as a Syrian national. However, with her parents being of mixed-faith, it was not possible to register either their marriage or her birth, preventing her from being recognized as Syrian national or obtaining documents to prove this.

Maha was also not considered Lebanese, as the law there does not allow for acquisition of nationality by birth in the territory and her parents are not Lebanese.

For stateless children such as Maha, services that are usually taken for granted, such as education and healthcare, are only accessible by relying on the good will of individual people. “I had to receive a special exemption to pass my high school certificate,” says Maha whose parents had to beg her school director to allow her and her two siblings to receive an education.

After graduation, only one university, out of the many she had applied to, accepted her. But not to study medicine, which was her dream. “Being stateless hurts much more when you know you are capable of doing so much,” says Maha. “You can’t realize your potential if you are not given the right to exist.”

In her mid-20s, tired of writing letters to ministers begging for a nationality and moving from one job to another for fear of getting caught without the right papers, Maha started thinking that her solution lay abroad. She inquired about resettlement via UNHCR or getting permission to travel abroad but her efforts were fruitless. The visa-processing officer from Canada provided Maha with one of her favorite responses: “Maha, we would love to have you in Canada, but where would we stamp your visa?” It was only after her sister sent letters to every embassy in Lebanon that they got a positive response from Brazil. On 19 September 2014, for the first time in her life, Maha had the legal means to leave Lebanon.

In Brazil, Maha was able to obtain a six-month visa on account of the fact that she was of Syrian heritage and therefore had a possible refugee claim. On May 2016, with the help of UNHCR in Brazil, Maha and her family obtained refugee status in Brazil, giving her similar rights to that of a Brazilian resident but without giving her a nationality. This was the first time Maha could actually hold an ID card that gave her rights. “When I had it in my hands, I cried and screamed and then asked my sister whether she was sure the document was real…” she said. “I couldn’t believe it!”

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/maha-mamo/