HAMA, Syria (North Press) – Residents of the city of Hama, central Syria, say that they avoid registering their newborn male children in the Civil Registry Office in order to avoid their registration compulsory military service.
Although this may deprive the child of identity documents and create difficulties in the educational process in addition to all aspects of life, these families say that this is the only option left in light of their inability to secure the costs of their children traveling outside the country or pay the cash allowance for military service.
In November 2020, Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a legislative decree specifying the cash allowance amounts for those assigned to compulsory service, which amounted to $3,000 or its equivalent in Syrian pounds according to the exchange rate of the Central Bank of Syria.
50-year-old Mohammad al-Nuwair (a pseudonym), a Hama resident, said that he postponed the registration of his four-year-old son to keep his elder 25-year-old son, the only male, from having to register for service.
“The situation is very hard; I cannot pay thousands of dollars in the current situation to secure my son’s departure from Syria,” al-Nuwair added.
He has no intention of registering his son in the Registry Office, and “will wait until the situation is better,” he added.
Hama resident Naima al-Jarjomy (a pseudonym) refrained from registering her three and a half-year-old son in the Registry Office “so that his elder brother would not be asked to join the military service.”
She told North Press that her elder son is the sole breadwinner for the family. “My husband is sick and unable to work; if my son joined the military service we will be without any breadwinner,” she explained.
“I will register the younger son in the Registry Office when our situation improves and his brother is ready to travel abroad,” she pointed out.
Most of those who have not registered their children give birth in private clinics or use midwives “so the midwife or the doctor documents the birth of the child on paper without providing a date and lets the mother choose any date she wants to register her child,” according to an employee in the Registry Office.
He believes that the consequences of this act are dangerous in the future, referring to the unavailability of any procedure by the government to control this case, “as there is no law requiring residents to register the child once he is born.”
Other families in Hama resort to registering their male children as sons of the eldest brother, so the latter will be the only son of the family in the official departments.
Hamas resident Nour al-Qasoum told North Press, “I did not register my one and a half-year-old son in the Registry Office; I will register him when my eldest son gets married so he will be in the family register of my eldest son.”
She does this because of her financial inability to secure the travel of her son abroad, adding that “the reality forced us to carry out such undesirable procedures, as we cannot afford the costs of traveling to another country and I will not send my son to military service and death. This is the appropriate solution.”
She added that one of her neighbors got her eldest son married and registered her younger son as the elder’s child.
The Syrian constitution forces males between 18 and 42 to join compulsory military service, while it excludes only sons of the family.