A first in Mount Lebanon: Stateless woman married to a Lebanese man granted citizenship

In a ruling that marks a first for the courts of Mount Lebanon, the Baabda Court of First Instance, presided over by Judge Yehia Ghabboura, recently recognized the Lebanese nationality of a stateless woman married to a Lebanese man.The court based its decision on the Lebanese nationality law, Article 5, which states that a foreign woman who marries a Lebanese man becomes Lebanese one year after the marriage is registered with the civil status office.While this interpretation has been applied for many years by the Beirut Court of First Instance, which handles personal status matters, the Mount Lebanon court had until now been reluctant to adopt it. Its judges had taken the view that they could not recognize a marriage that the Lebanese administration refuses to register in the civil status records on grounds of statelessness.This held...