'Foreigners in their own home': The Lebanese mothers fighting for their children's right to belong

When a Lebanese woman marries a man from a foreign land, she is reminded that, on a political, financial and societal level, in the eyes of the state, her children are not truly Lebanese. She may have been born in Beirut, voted in elections, paid her taxes, and never lived elsewhere. Yet, because she married a non-Lebanese man, her child inherited only his nationality.

This is the result of Lebanon's 1925 Nationality Law, born of the French Mandate era, which creates a system of unequal citizenship by preventing Lebanese women who marry foreign nationals from passing their citizenship to their children or spouses.

For families affected by the law, however, the consequences extend far beyond legal status. The restrictions shape access to residency, employment, education, healthcare and other essential services throughout a family's life.

In some cases, children can even be left vulnerable to statelessness, highlighting how a legal distinction rooted in patriarchal hierarchies between men and women continues to produce lasting social and economic inequalities.

For Ramzi Kaiss of Human Rights Watch, the central issue is straightforward: "Lebanon's nationality law should be amended so that men and women have access to the same rights," he tells The New Arab.

Ramzi notes that under Nationality Law No. 15, Lebanese women cannot pass citizenship to their children or spouses, whereas their male counterparts generally have the right to pass citizenship to their families.

"The sex of a person should not determine what legal benefits they may enjoy in the country," Ramzi adds.

He describes the impact of the law on a personal, financial and political level, saying the legal framework "affects their ability to work in certain sectors, to participate in elections, to access services that other people with the nationality have access to."

Locked out of equal opportunities

For families living under these restrictions, those legal differences can have immediate and practical consequences.

When Lebanese mothers are prevented from passing on their citizenship, the consequences can extend far beyond questions of identity. Their uncertain legal status places them at greater risk of exploitation, trafficking and homelessness.

Given that they are not recognised as natural-born Lebanese citizens, foreign spouses and children must repeatedly obtain residency and, where applicable, work permits to remain and work lawfully in the country. Their status as legal residents rather than citizens also means that children are generally ineligible for free public education, greatly limiting their overall prospects in the country.

Education is one area where this uncertainty becomes particularly visible. For example, although some children of Lebanese mothers might be eligible to attend public schools free of charge, their status as foreign nationals often creates additional obstacles.

Each year, the Ministry of Education prioritises the enrolment of Lebanese citizens, meaning children considered 'non-Lebanese' under the Nationality Law face greater uncertainty and longer waits to secure a place in the classroom.

For Amanda, who spent her childhood in Lebanon before leaving for college, the prospect of returning is complicated by the restrictions she could face.

"The possibility that I'd come back to the country is slim. I'm anticipating a lot of difficulty applying for work permits and going through residency again. It feels like a lot of doors are shut before I even get there," she says.

The sectarian argument

The difficulties do not end with education or residency. For the most part, children and spouses of Lebanese women are also excluded from Lebanon's National Social Security Fund and subsidised care provided by the Ministry of Public Health.

For Danya, a Lebanese woman married to a Palestinian, this has meant having to be hyper-aware of minor medical expenses at all times.

Her family once had private insurance, but they decided to abandon their policy after weighing the costs against the uncertainty of whether an insurer would continue covering them if a chronic illness developed. Even a minor injury could leave the family facing expenses that extend far beyond their means.

For these families, the absence of citizenship is therefore not just about their legal status in the country. It determines how and if they can access basic healthcare in a secure and affordable way.

These consequences have also raised wider questions about the law itself. Not only does the implementation of a legal framework that discriminates based on sex violate international law, but it also directly contradicts Lebanon's own constitution, with Article 7 stating that all Lebanese are guaranteed equality before the law, regardless of identity.

Yet despite these concerns, the debate over reform has repeatedly returned to Lebanon's sectarian balance.

For years, Lebanese politicians have framed nationality reform as a threat to the country's sectarian balance. Many campaigners have long argued that this explanation quickly unravels under scrutiny.

If Lebanon's nationality law were truly about preserving the country's delicate demographic balance, many campaigners ask: why do those concerns only seem to arise when women seek the same rights as men?

While multiple successive governments have repeatedly cited demographic concerns to justify preventing women from passing on their citizenship, the same logic has never been applied to Lebanese men, who retain the unrestricted right to confer nationality on their foreign spouses and children.

For Human Rights Watch activists such as Ramzi, this inconsistency reveals that the debate is driven less by constitutional necessity than by political calculations rooted in gender discrimination.

"Politicians in Lebanon regularly refer to sectarian and demographic concerns to spark fear. These same leaders have regularly resorted to sectarian or demographic-related arguments to bar women from passing nationality to their children or spouses. But somehow those arguments cease to exist when it comes to men's ability to pass their nationality," he says.

The battle to change Lebanon's nationality law

The political argument has persisted despite years of campaigning for reform. While it is true that some ministries have offered minor amendments to increase access to basic rights for those impacted by the law, these have been widely criticised as fragmented attempts to appease the wider public without offering tangible and reliable resolution.

Lebanese women's rights groups, such as Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTDA) and Masir, have spent over 20 years pushing multiple governments to amend the nationality law and grant women the same right as men to pass on their citizenship.

Despite this hardline campaigning effort, reform has repeatedly been blocked by a familiar political argument: extending nationality rights to women married to Palestinian refugees would greatly disturb Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance and, therefore, the law must remain intact.

But campaigners point to figures they say challenge the scale of that concern.

A 2016 census of Palestinians in Lebanon recorded just 3,707 households in which a Palestinian man married a woman of another nationality. According to activists, this figure alone immediately undermines claims that reform would trigger a major demographic shift.

Instead, advocates highlight an overwhelmingly glaring inconsistency: while politicians lean into their own self-interested sectarian concerns to justify restricting women's nationality rights, Lebanese men continue to pass citizenship to foreign spouses and children without the same objections being raised.

For the women caught in the middle of Lebanon's nationality law, the debate over sectarian balance is not an abstract political argument. It is felt in the residency office, at the school gates and when their family needs medical care.

Despite living, paying taxes and co-existing in Lebanon, they are treated as foreigners in their own home.

Those who do decide to stay, or rather are unable to leave, face immeasurable scrutiny and a never-ending bureaucratic nightmare that limits their basic rights and freedoms as nationals.

For more than two decades, campaigners have challenged a system that gives Lebanese men a right that Lebanese women are denied.

Yet reform remains enmeshed in competing political calculations and aspirations, with the prospect of sectarian imbalance repeatedly invoked to justify maintaining the status quo.

That leaves a question at the heart of the debate: if demographic concerns are the sole reason for withholding nationality from the children of Lebanese women, why is this not a concern for Lebanese men?

Until that contradiction is adequately addressed at a political and state level, Lebanese women will continue to face a deeply unequal form of citizenship, which allows them to be recognised as Lebanese in almost every facet of public life except where it means the most: at home with their children.

Lucy Rafaela Farha is a London-based freelance journalist and digital creative