During the first year of the Arab Uprisings, Lebanese women married to noncitizens reiterated claims they have been raising since the turn of the millennium for the right to give their nationality to their children. The Lebanese nationality law, formed under French mandate rule in 1925, states that nationality is conferred through paternal jus sanguinis – i.e. through the blood of Lebanese males. According to article one, “[e]very person born to a Lebanese father is Lebanese”.

Through mobilization and articulation of interests, women in Lebanon found common ground on the issue of pushing for reform in patriarchal nationality laws during the 2011 Uprisings. They expressed what feminist political scientist Jill Vickers see as shared understandings of ‘women’s interests’ which would otherwise not be asserted by elite men making decisions.