Due to the importance of personal identification documents and the negative consequences of not possessing them on the lives of individuals, this study was conducted, in order to reveal the numbers of Syrians who do not have personal identification documents, and to define the most prominent personal identification documents that Syrians suffer tremendously to obtain, while listing the negative consequences of not possessing them.
The study was conducted in the cities of Idlib and Salqeen in Syria, it also included the city of Urfa in Turkey and the regions of Arsal and the Bekaa in Lebanon, in which 305 male and female participated, taking into consideration while selecting them a number of variables such as status of residence, age and social status, and data collection was conducted using a questionnaire with closed-ended questions.
The results of the study showed that many Syrians, whether residing in the liberated areas or in the countries of refuge, do not possess the personal identity documents of all kinds, especially passports, civil registry record or educational documents.
Additionally, many Syrian children are still not registered at official state departments and many young people, who are more than fourteen years old, still do not possess IDs. Many Syrian have lost their personal identification documents as a result of the bombing of their areas or during displacement, or it was confiscated or destroyed by the various military bodies and forces dominated by the Syrian regime.
The fear of being arrested by the pro-regime forces prohibited many Syrians from traveling to regime areas which constituted the main reason for the Syrians’ inability to obtain any official document. In addition to the fact that many of them cannot afford paying for these documents, considering that paying bribes to employees of the governmental institutions or hiring a lawyer is the most common ways to obtain these documents.
As for the negative outcomes of the non-possession of official documents and not registering personal affairs documents in the official government departments, the most concerning issue is depriving unregistered children from their nationality, particularly in the event of the inability to register the marriage documents, and the inability of people without personal IDs to vote or run for public services jobs or state departments jobs, in addition to depriving them of many of their most basic rights that people cannot live properly without it, such as the right to education, the right to work, the prevention of travel and the restriction of individual freedom and deprivation of health care.