INTISAR, Mosul-- When Haji Raad's third grandson, Hamza, was born in Mosul's Salam hospital, doctors told him not to worry much about birth certificate for the newly born. It will sort itself out, they told him. Two years later, his precious grandson is still without legal documents that would prove Hamza is indeed an Iraqi citizen.
Hamza was born, along with many other children, during the Islamic State's rule in Mosul, which has still not entirely come to an end as the battle to drive out militants continues into the second month.
“He doesn't have Iraqi identity card nor the citizenship,” Hamza's mother says fearing that the lack of legal papers would imperil his son's future access to education and healthcare.
“The hospital gave us a piece of paper and said the government will do the rest,” the mother says who is still very much skeptical of the government's complete return to the war-torn city.
The government in Baghdad has been reluctant to address the issue over the past two years, although it did not entirely freeze its ties with Mosul even after it was invaded by the militants. The central government has regularly been paying wages for the state servants in the hope it would limit public dependence on ISIS in the city and preventing the group from recruiting young Sunnis desperately in need of economic assistance.
The situation has been complicated not least due to the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq to and around the vast Mosul province, a region where shift in population makeup favoring rivalling communities with shared territorial claims could determine the future status of these areas.
Nineveh Plains with Mosul as its provincial capital is addressed in a constitutional article known as 140, which preconditions a referendum to resolve the territorial disputes in the area among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians and many other ethnic groups.
“We haven't been able to issue any Iraqi documents for these children who were born since August 2014 since it has been difficult to establish their parents' origin,” said the exiled director of Mosul's health office who is still waiting to return to work when ISIS is driven out from the city.
According to the health office, the number of children born over the past two years could be in their thousands, but accurate data is only possible when the city has been recaptured from the militants, officials say.
Issuing Iraqi citizenship has been largely postponed for foreigners since 2003, although according to the constitution any person should be able to apply for citizenship after living in Iraq for a period of 8 years. The postponement is an implicit effort to block refugees from neighboring countries to become Iraqi citizens and disturb the population make up in disputed areas.
