Why Jordanian mothers still can't give citizenship to their children

Ahmed Zubeidi is a living ghost.

The 23-year-old is unable to get a job, enter a hospital, or own a mobile phone. He cannot marry or even leave his village on the desert outskirts of the city of Mafraq by the Jordan-Syria border.

He has no passport, no national ID. For Jordan, it was as if he had never existed. But his mother is a Jordanian.

“I am not a refugee or an [internally displaced person],” Mr. Zubeidi says from his cousin’s home. “I am a Jordanian, the son of a Jordanian. But they don’t see it that way.”

Zubeidi is one of an estimated hundreds of Jordanian residents who have been left stateless, and one of hundreds of thousands denied basic rights – all because their Jordanian mothers chose to marry foreign or unregistered fathers. He requested his first name be altered due

Outdated lawsLost in the systemPolitical footballPrivileges, not rightsFew solutions