Stateless refugees sit in limbo
- Toronto Star: August 7th, 2007, by Nicholas Keung
- Photo: Stefan Christoff, Burj el-Shemali Refugee Camp, South Lebanon.
Born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Youssef Kanaan has been “an unwelcome guest” all his life – surviving, with no permanent home, at the mercy of others.
Like many of the 4 million Palestinians who lost their ancestral homes in Arab-Israel conflicts in 1948 and 1967, Kanaan is stateless, a peculiar situation that deprives him of basic rights in the land of his birth, Lebanon, and dooms him to a strange limbo in Canada.
