Published by
Al-Araby
Al-Araby
When Zeinab Abu Tabikh got married, she did not realise that she was about to embark on a lifelong journey to secure basic rights for her children. Zeinab is Jordanian, but her Egyptian husband never gained citizenship – even after working in Jordan for over forty years. Neither did the couple’s four children, who are, in Zeinab’s words, “foreigners in their own country.” Over355,000 people in Jordan are children of a Jordanian mother and a foreign father. Called “abna al urduniyat”, meaning “the children of Jordanian women”, they are considered non-citizens in the eyes of the state. As a resu…