Imagine being no one.
No name, no nation, no access to education, healthcare, or employment.
That’s who I am after my father, a Syrian soldier, left my Lebanese mother and I in Darbechtar, a small town in a small country in 1991, without registering me.
To this day women are not allowed to register their children in Lebanon or many other Middle Eastern countries. So, I, until very recently, joined 10 million other ‘stateless’ people around the world, according to the United Nations.
If you’re not familiar with the term statelessness, the most simplified definition I can think of is an alien, because what else would you call someone who is not legally recognized as a human being, or a citizen of any country? I might as well be from Mars, right?
Just ‘Google’ statelessness. You see people running for their lives, living in poverty, hopeless and stateless. You don’t see pictures of someone working at Accenture in Sydney.
So here is my story.
My mother, aunt and grandmother raised me. My mother was poor, uneducated and in constant fear her son would be thrown into detention.
She knew the only way out for me was an education. She tried to register me at every school in the region with no luck.
Desperate, my mother begged the nuns at the Catholic Primary School she cleaned at to let me sit in on the lessons.
She said, ‘all I want is for my son to learn how to read and write to give him a fighting chance.’
Luckily, the nuns accepted, and I was granted illegal but free education. I then worked for cash and saved up to study finance at the Lebanese University branch in Tripoli. The first identification I ever got was this abomination of an ID card.
I persevered and graduated with a Master of Finance in 2012 and worked at a French company whose CEO was a huge support. He said, ’I don’t care about your legal status if you do your job, I’ll pay you cash.’
The year 2016 was a turning point for me. My mother died, her meagre assets went to my uncles, and I had no chance of Lebanese citizenship. Grieving, but determined not to die stateless in Lebanon I went on a letter writing campaign.
That’s when Talent Beyond Boundaries came to my aid.
They saw my skills, not my statelessness. They saw me as an asset, not a liability. It took two years and a legal loophole, but I finally I made my way to Australia and became the first stateless person there to secure a skills shortage visa, migrating to Australia to work at Accenture.
Talent Beyond Boundaries are now partnering with Pearson to offer 600 free and discounted English language tests to refugees and stateless people for visa applications around the world. I wish this was available when I did my test. It was one of the most difficult hurdles in my journey.
I am not exaggerating when I say my education saved my life. I can now speak three languages, but I have no words to describe how grateful I am to Talent Beyond Boundaries and all the people who believed in me to get me where I am today.
Pearson and Talent Beyond Boundaries now offer free English language tests to skilled refugees to help them resume their careers and rebuild their lives in a new country. Over 600 refugees from around the world will benefit from the partnership, offering 300 free tests and a further 300 tests at a discount over three years.
Fadi Chalouhy is an Associate Manager at Accenture Australia. He is a motivational speaker and survivor. He firmly believes that no problem can’t be solved with the right tools and a smile.