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| Picture belonging to the same blog: © Jodi Hilton (NPR) - Ayaman with his wife,
Selma, and their one-month-old daughter Shana, who was born in Turkey. Syrian
refugee parents who give birth in Turkey are finding it difficult to register
their newborns and many are stateless.
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Thousands of Syrian infants born to refugee parents are now
stateless. Their births are unregistered and will pose many difficult challenges
in this long-term conflict.
The exact numbers are far from certain. A recent report by the
United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, suggests that 75 percent of Syrians born
in Lebanon since 2011 have not been properly registered. Many families don't
have any identification documents, which were destroyed in the fighting, or left
behind in a panicked escape.
The numbers are even harder to come by in Turkey, where hundreds of
thousands of refugees are unregistered. They slipped across the border for
safety, but their babies born in Turkey have no official status.
