Enab Baladi – Sedra al-Hariri
Zina, a woman in her late thirties with Gypsy features and a lost identity, may seem to have an ordinary story on the surface, but what is unseen is far greater than what is seen.
Zina is unregistered, living like a breathing shadow, without a legal name, rights, or official existence in a country where she was born but never existed on paper.
“My dream is to own a passport and to travel without fear,” Zina expresses her simple dreams of obtaining identification papers that would allow her to own a home, travel, or even obtain an educational certificate that she could not achieve because she is not recognized in the state records.
Stigma and buried dreams
“People know our Gypsy community as a closed society, where its members work in dance and singing; no one knows that we have tried to work in other fields,” Zina says, her voice tense, hiding years of disappointment.
Zina, who lost “the love of her life” (her husband, who was martyred during the Syrian revolution in Homs), talks about a rare moment of feeling secure, saying, “I didn’t need anyone when he was with me; for the first time, I felt safe.”
She sighs, then continues, “After his martyrdom, I had no choice but to return to the only place that accepted me, the nightclubs.”
Lack of accurate statistics
Today, Zina works as a waitress in a restaurant, spending more than 12 hours a day in strenuous work for a meager salary, where she is subjected to repeated insults.
“My boss asks me to seduce customers to return to the place, and when I refuse, he showers me with insults. I have no choice; all I want is to feed my child.”
Thousands of Gypsies in Syria live without accurate statistics tracking their official numbers; they call themselves “Doms” or “Doom,” while others refer to them with various labels such as “Nawar,” “Lor,” and “Qurbat,” names that often carry with them stigma or a derogatory view.
Gypsies have historically been concentrated in the rural areas of Homs, Aleppo, Latakia, and the outskirts of Damascus and Afrin, living a nomadic life in tents, engaging in herding or some marginal handicraft professions.
In the early 20th century, harsh snowstorms led to the loss of their livestock, forcing many to abandon their primary profession and seek alternatives in the cities.
In estimated figures, the number of Gypsies in the Deir Ezzor governorate, which borders Iraq, is about 1,700 families, while in Raqqa, it nearly doubles, and similarly in Aleppo. However, their numbers are notably increasing in the Badia regions of Homs and Hama, where in Hama, it reaches 4,000 families, according to the magazine “Al-Majalla.”
A study titled “The Marginalized in Syria in the Late Twentieth Century… Oral Testimonies” by researcher Abdullah Hanna indicates that the majority of Gypsies in Syria live in poverty and chronic social marginalization, although a few have managed to improve their conditions by working in the entertainment and arts fields.
With the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, their situation significantly worsened.
The Gypsies did not have a clear political stance on the conflict, but that did not protect them from its repercussions; their residential areas on the outskirts of cities, such as the Jourat al-Arayes neighborhood west of Homs, were destroyed. Those who remained were forced to move with their tents to the squares of Damascus, fleeing from shelling and displacement, and searching for a place that would not reject them.
Ministry of Interior procedures
In Syria, unregistered individuals are classified into two main types: the first includes individuals who have no record in the official civil registries, neither they nor their parents or grandparents, and they need to obtain citizenship. Their case is treated as an entirely unregistered status, according to the media office of the Ministry of Interior in a statement to Enab Baladi.
The second type concerns individuals who have registered roots, but were not officially recorded for various reasons, such as travel or others, and these are typically over the age of 18.
Regarding the procedures for registering unregistered individuals, the media office of the Ministry of Interior stated that the law requires the submission of an “unregistered case” file, conducting a medical examination to determine age, and the necessity of providing a family statement and papers proving the registration of family members in the civil registries. If their parents are registered, these individuals can complete their registration procedures based on their parents’ data.
Legal perspective
In the legal aspect of the issue of unregistered individuals, lawyer Mahmoud al-Zarazra explains that they do not possess any official document proving their identity, except for an identification card granted by the local chief, which is used only to facilitate their movement within the country, but it does not authorize them to obtain any other official documents, such as a passport or personal ID card.
Al-Zarazra clarifies that the possibility of registering unregistered individuals varies depending on the legal status of the parents. If the father is registered and the mother is unregistered, the child can be registered under the father’s records. However, in cases where both parents are unregistered, the matter becomes more complex and may sometimes require tracing family roots to find a registered individual who can be relied upon to establish the rest.
He adds that such cases are exhausting and costly, requiring significant time and effort, as well as high accuracy needed in proving lineage and kinship.
In turn, lawyer Nebras Watfa explains that there is no legal text in Syrian law that prevents Gypsies from registering their civil statuses. However, what effectively prevents them is a combination of social and cultural factors, primarily the prevalent customs and traditions within the Gypsy community, in addition to “their weak legal awareness.”
Watfa points out that the problem of unregistered individuals in this community is cumulative in nature, starting with parents who are not registered in the state’s records, which automatically leads to their children also remaining unregistered, passing the problem down from generation to generation.
The lawyer recalls the security obstacles that Gypsies specifically faced before the Syrian revolution, saying, “Even if the parents took the initiative to register their children immediately after birth, it would require security approval from the political security branch due to the security perception and discrimination associated with their ethnic origins.”
Every morning, Zina walks to work without carrying an identification card in her pocket or hope in her heart, but she walks.
She walks because hunger does not wait and because her child does not know that his mother is invisible in the state records.
Her dream is not grand; she does not ask for a palace or fame, just a piece of paper that proves she is the daughter of this homeland and that she exists.
In a country torn apart by war, there are still those who are denied the simplest rights—to have a name, to be registered, to be counted as a human being.
Gypsies of Syria: A community without a record Enab Baladi.
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