Statelessness in Kuwait: Kuwait’s Bidoon
DEVELOPMENTS
Fresh from its participation in the 8th session of the United Nations’ Periodic Review, a process initiated in 2006 by the UN General Assembly and conducted by the UN Human Rights Council to review all nations’ human rights records by 2011, the Kuwaiti government will now consider the international community’s comments on Kuwait’s policy toward its more than 80,000 stateless inhabitants. Known as the Bidoon, Arabic for “without,” and short for Bidoon Jinsiya, which means without citizenship, Kuwait’s stateless population remains severely constrained in Kuwaiti society, where they enjoy hardly any of the rights accorded to legal temporary workers, let alone full citizens.
While the Kuwaiti government has passed and introduced favorable legislation to improve the rights of Bidoon in Kuwaiti society, the Periodic Review has spotlighted the enduring challenges of Bidoon life in Kuwait.
BACKGROUND
Estimated to be between 80,000 and 120,000 in number, the Kuwaiti Bidoon are part of a larger Bidoon demographic that resides in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Kuwait. Many of the Bidoon trace their lineage to Bedouin tribes that migrated for centuries among the lands that became the nation states of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq in the 20th century. In 1959, Kuwait passed a Nationality Law that defined Kuwaiti nationals as persons settled in Kuwait prior to 1920 who maintained normal residence thereafter until the Nationality Law’s passage. Upon the law’s passage, one third of Kuwait’s residents were recognized as citizens, a second third were naturalized and granted partial citizenship rights, and the remaining third were classified as Bidoon Jinsiya.
Although without citizenship, the Bidoon Jinsiya continued after 1959 to serve in the army and police. They were also included in Kuwait’s 1965 census. After 1985, the path to citizenship upon which more than a few Bidoon had relied became murkier, when many were dismissed from jobs, their children barred from public schools, drivers’ licenses revoked, and the carrying of passports by Bidoon severely restricted. Despite Bidoon participation on the Kuwaiti side in the first Gulf War, post-war the Kuwaiti government continued to remove Bidoon from military and police positions, rehiring only fractions of those previously employed.
Today, by many measures, the lives of the Bidoon who did not flee Kuwait after the Gulf Wars are bleak. Unable to receive a marriage license, birth certificate, driver’s license, or passport, and subject to a legal system that has no authority to hear rights challenges to Kuwaiti citizenship policy because the government views such policy as the exclusive province of the state, not the courts, to review, the Bidoon lack access to many of the essential prerequisites in Kuwaiti society for home ownership, small business management, and childhood public education.
Despite the difficulties of Kuwaiti Bidoon life, Kuwaiti parliamentarians and the Kuwaiti government have attempted to alleviate the Bidoon’s plight. In 2000, the Kuwaiti government passed a naturalization law that would permit a maximum of 2000 Kuwaiti stateless residents and their families to be naturalized. In 2003, the government eased the cap to permit 5500 Bidoon to apply for citizenship, of which ultimately 1600 were naturalized, more than had been naturalized the year prior. The apex of government attempts to help the Bidoon came in 2008, when four Kuwaiti Parliamentarians unsuccessfully proposed legislation that would have granted citizenship to all Bidoon counted in the 1965 census who had no criminal record.
ANALYSIS
Although laudable, the Kuwaiti government’s efforts to improve the Bidoon’s condition are inadequate. There may be merit to the government’s claims that more than half of the remaining Bidoon are exploiting their Bidoon status to hide their true nationality. Yet like so much about the Bidoon’s demographics, such assertions are unverifiable without a proper census. The recent completion of Kuwait’s UN Periodic Review provides good cover to its pro-Bidoon politicians to pursue a census and other initiatives aimed at improving the lives of the Bidoon, who should have an opportunity to prove their loyalty to Kuwait, and in exchange for proven loyalty, receive a chance to naturalize.
To this end, the Kuwaiti government can undertake reasonable steps that balance its sovereign concerns with the humanitarian imperative of resolving the Kuwaiti Bidoon’s status. First, the Kuwaiti government should conduct a census to account for the Bidoon population. Based on that census, the Kuwaiti government should consider a number of options, as recommended by Refugees International: immediate and transparent reviews of all Bidoon cases, moving toward naturalization; a guaranteed Bidoon right to work and earn equitable incomes; enrolling Bidoon children in public school; ensuring healthcare for all Bidoon; and providing the Bidoon with certificates for birth, marriage, and death. If these options seem unappealing, the Kuwaiti government should consult closely with its Saudi neighbors, whose Interior Ministry evaluated its own Bidoon policy in 2008.
By taking these steps, combined with serious consideration of the UN Universal Periodic Review Recommendations, the Kuwaiti government can embark on its own path toward a sustainable, reasonable policy that grants its Bidoon population the human dignity they deserve.
Marc Sorel is the former Middle East Regional Editor of Foreign Policy Digest.
