Badea'a still feels sorry for her four sons. They couldn't pursue their education, nor could they fulfil their dreams and ambitions, because they are stateless Syrian Kurds, specifically from the so-called maktumeen[1].
Badea'a Farhan Hasan was born in the city of Qamishli/Qamishlo in 1948. She is married with four children. As a result of the special census carried out by the Syrian government in 1962, her family was divided, some becoming citizens and others, maktumeen, which made her face several difficulties as she told STJ researcher who interviewed her on March 2018:
"My husband and I are from the same family, but he is maktum and I am a citizen, as his name came under the maktumeen by the census decree. He didn’t care much then, since we had no kids. However, when my first daughter was born, in the early 1980’s, we started having serious difficulties, so I asked my brother, who was a member of The People's Council at the time, to resolve our legal status but he couldn’t do that. I can’t forget once when my daughter returned from school weeping, because the headmaster kicked her out of school arguing that her father is a stateless, and said that those like her shouldn’t come to school, they should stay home and do the housework instead. I went to the headmaster and tried to explain my daughter’s legal status, but he insisted and reiterated that my daughter was unregistered. Then when he finished and before I left I said to him in Kurdish: “If I had a gun now, I'd blow your head, and I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life in prison.”
Badea'a’s family made numerous attempts to resolve its legal status by submitting papers to the Civil Status Department in Amuda town, but in vain. Badea'a’s daughter finished secondary education with excellent grades, enough to get in any university major, but unfortunately, she could not attend university despite all attempts to resolve her legal status:
"Some of my sons were allowed to enrol at university later, but it was "provisional", meaning that they were allowed to attend university but without getting a graduation certificate at the end. People in my town always say to me that my sons’ studies have no future and I always reply that it is important for them to be educated even if they couldn’t obtain certificates. We endure poverty for our children to be educated.
Once, after my daughter graduated from the English Literature department, she went to college to ask if she can receive her certificate, but the employee told her that she couldn’t, because she didn’t have an ID. My daughter cried a lot and said to the employee that she studied really hard and made every effort to obtain the certificate but the employee made nothing."
Failing to gain the graduation certificate, Badea'a’s daughter immigrated illegally to Europe, as it was the best choice for her. Her son, however, dropped out of high school, so that he wouldn’t not suffer the same fate as his brothers. Badea'a continued saying :
“I always wanted my four sons to be well-educated. We suffered a lot from statelessness. My daughter worked as a hairdresser after being graduated from the English Literature Department, and then she was hired at Autonomous Administration institution like her friends.
I always feel sorry for my sons, and fear for the future of their children in case they have.”
[1] Sing. maktum/maktumah, i. e., unregistered stateless people.