Al-Hasakah, northeast Syria – Today, activists in Syria’s northeast announced the launch of the Network for Stateless Victims, marking the 63rd anniversary of the 1962 “exceptional census” in Hasakah province that stripped hundreds of thousands of Kurds and other residents of their Syrian nationality.
In a statement, the new initiative described itself as an independent, victim-led effort to provide a unified platform for solidarity, coordination, and advocacy on behalf of those deprived of citizenship or born without civil registration. The network emphasized its mission to empower victims to “speak for themselves, tell their stories, and lead their demands,” focusing on truth, recognition, reparations, and institutional reform to ensure non-repetition.
The group’s vision, it said, is a society in which the dignity of stateless victims is upheld, and full citizenship is guaranteed as part of a just and inclusive peace in Syria.
The network underlined the lasting consequences of the 1962 census, which divided those affected into two categories: “foreigners of Hasakah,” who were issued red identification cards, and the “unregistered,” who were left with no legal documents at all.
Rights groups estimate that over 517,000 people were affected by statelessness before 2011. Although a presidential decree that year restored nationality to many, more than 150,000 people, mostly unregistered, remain without citizenship to this day.
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For decades, families passed down statelessness to their children, denying them basic rights such as education, health care, employment, property ownership, and freedom of movement. “Children grew up without papers, without a legal name or nationality,” the network noted, calling this a generational cycle of exclusion.
The group stressed that launching the network is a step toward reframing statelessness as a national wound requiring recognition, justice, and reform. “It is about ensuring no child in Syria is ever again born without a name or a country,” the statement said.
The 1962 census was carried out under President Nazim al-Qudsi, with the stated goal of distinguishing “Syrian Kurds” from “migrants” from Turkey and Iraq. The result was the mass deprivation of nationality for Kurds in Hasakah, who were suddenly barred from registering marriages, obtaining passports, or enrolling their children in schools without intrusive security investigations. Many were also excluded from public sector jobs, political participation, and access to state services.
The launch of the new network comes amid wider debates in Syria’s transitional period about citizenship, minority rights, and transitional justice.
