Hiam Abu Ragheb has big dreams for her 19-month-old triplets despite being a Bedouin without papers in Lebanon. Her sons will be doctors – Bahaa, a gynaecologist and Saad, a surgeon – and her daughter Nazek will be a lawyer or journalist.

But little Bahaa, Saad and Nazek, namesakes of members of Lebanon’s Hariri dynasty – Saad Hariri is now prime minister – might not even make it through school. They have no identity papers.

The Abu Raghebs belong to the Bedouin Huruq tribe and are among more than 100,000 Arab Bedouins who live in eastern Lebanon, many of whom have been fighting for years to be recognised by the state as citizens.

Once a migrant community that lived off herding and agriculture, Lebanon’s Bedouins gave up their traditional nomadic lifestyle by the mid-20th century and settled in the country’s east where they remain today, battling poverty, state neglect and discrimination.

“This is a human rights crisis of the first order,” said anthropologist Hiba Morcos, who is researching citizenship among Lebanon’s Bedouin community for her doctoral dissertation at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“Denying them citizenship in turn is blocking their access to political participation, education and healthcare,” Ms Morcos said.

The country’s only nationality law dates back to 1925 – before Lebanon was even an independent state – and stipulates that citizenship be granted to all descendants of men who lived in what is now Lebanon in 1914, under the Ottoman Empire.

Lebanon’s last census was conducted in 1932 under the French mandate, prior to the founding of the modern state. Only those who registered that year were declared Lebanese, allowing their descendants to inherit citizenship.