While Kuwait often features in global discussions of geopolitics and energy — owing to its position among the top ten countries in oil production and reserves — its pressing human rights issues have attracted limited attention outside advocacy organizations.  This relative neglect is partly shaped by the country’s reputation as the most democratic state among its Gulf peers. Since 1963, Kuwait has had an elected National Assembly whose members historically enjoyed a decent level of autonomy and powers. Yet some of its most serious human rights concerns lie precisely in areas that receive far less public attention, particularly citizenship and legal status. Citizenship has long been a contentiously debated matter in Kuwait but it took a more aggressive turn following the ascension of Emir Mishal Al-Sabah in December 2023 which has seen the country stripping 50,000 people of their citizenship over the course of the past two years. Early signals were evident: in a fiery speech after taking the constitutional oath, Al-Sabah sharply criticized the government and the country’s National Assembly, accusing them of colluding to undermine the country’s interests. Subsequently, in May 2024, he unconstitutionally dissolved the assembly, partially suspended the constitution for four years, and took radical policy measures regarding citizenship and stateless persons.

According to the 1954 UN Convention, a stateless person is defined as “a person who is not considered a citizen by any country under its laws.” Estimated at around 92,000, the Bidoons (literally meaning “without) places Kuwait ninth among host states for stateless populations in the world. Despite internal opposition to the suspension of their status, international pressure, and the worsening of their conditions and growing demands for change, the issue remains unresolved.

The Bidoon Issue

The origins of the Bidoon issue can be traced back to several groups: tribal populations who did not register for citizenship following the establishment of the modern Kuwaiti state; individuals who served in the military during the 1970s that migrated from Arab countries and remained in Kuwait; and those who became Bidoon out of dependency (descendent of stateless individuals). While the situation of the Bidoon in Kuwait is longstanding, the past four decades have seen a shift in the framing of their presence from toleration toward greater restrictive categorization.

Indeed, initial years saw Bidoon largely enjoying equal rights with citizens, except for political ones. For instance, estimates suggest that during the 1970s and 1980s, the Bidoon constituted around 80% of Kuwait’s armed forces. It was precisely in this context, i.e. their contribution to the armed forces, however that became highly securitized in the mid-1980s upon the Iranian-Iraqi war, the attempted assassination of the Kuwaiti Emir, and later with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 which saw the placing of restrictions on Bidoon over questions of identity, loyalty, and demographic fears.

Since 2010, the Bidoon have been issued “review cards”, also known as “security” cards to facilitate identification. In later renewal processes, these cards began arbitrarily listing a non-Kuwaiti nationality for the holders, despite their stateless status. In 2014, Kuwait floated a deal with the Comoros that would offer the Bidoon a Comorian passport in exchange for funding infrastructure projects — a move that largely echoed an earlier approach taken by the UAE with its Bidoon population; however, unlike the UAE, Kuwait’s initiative failed due to internal opposition and the unfolding corruption scheme in the Comoros. The government later denied the existence of such an arrangement, despite Kuwaiti officials’ earlier announcements framing the initiative as “economic citizenship.” A string of legislation was subsequently introduced to address the Bidoon issue — including provisions for those the government recognizes as “entitled” to citizenship — but these remain highly restrictive, and implementation has consistently fallen short. While the persistence of the issue is variously attributed to legal complexity or to political considerations linked to national security, the institutional process is clear: the Ministry of Interior reviews applications and determines eligibility, but the final decision ultimately rests with the Emir.

Recent Citizenship Revocations Affecting the Bidoon

Public discourse opposing the naturalization of the Bidoon, as well as labeling some naturalized Kuwaitis as “non-original” or claiming they obtained citizenship through fraud, has long been a prominent feature of parliamentary debates and media-driven public opinion campaigns. As many observers pointed out, these discourses often carry racial undertones or are explicitly racist. And while many were expecting and hoping for change in dealing with the Bidoon condition, the measures adopted instead produced new cases of exclusion almost overnight. Beginning in March 2024, a wave of mass citizenship revocations emerged and rapidly intensified following the establishment of a hotline enabling citizens to report allegedly unlawful naturalization. These measures affected not only individuals accused of fraud but also those who had acquired citizenship through legally recognized procedures.

The grounds for the mass revocation of citizenship have varied and include (1) fraud and false statements in obtaining the citizenship, (2) acquisition of other citizenship, where dual citizenship is prohibited under Kuwaiti law (Article 11), and (3) unjustified acquisition of citizenship through claims of having rendered valuable services. Another complex subgroup comprises individuals who acquired citizenship derivatively from persons whose own nationality was later revoked and were themselves subsequently stripped of nationality as a result. In December 2024, Emiri Decree No. 116/2024 introduced amendments to the Nationality Law, further restricting eligibility for citizenship and denying women married to Kuwaiti men the right to confer citizenship. The vast majority of those whose citizenship was revoked are women who had constitutionally acquired nationality through marriage to Kuwaiti men, accounting for more than 80 percent of all affected individuals. But the overall wave of revocations spared no one, extending to media professionals, military officers, and political figures, most of whom the government claimed fell under one of the previously stated legal grounds.

Recent legislative amendments have also included the removal of the paragraph in Article 5 that had granted eligibility to Bidoon individuals listed in the 1965 census and residing in the country prior to that date, with verification difficulties cited as the justification. This change effectively excludes approximately 34,000 individuals who had previously been deemed eligible, thereby denying them access to citizenship. Coinciding with these amendments, the Minister of Interior announced that Kuwait was "arranging with more than one country to facilitate the acquisition of other nationalities by the stateless."

In practice, all these changes have meant that some Bidoon are not considered “entitled” by the government and are instead viewed as nationals of other states seeking to obtain the “privileges” of Kuwaiti citizenship. At the same time, the Kuwaiti government has appeared hesitant — and at times unwilling — to grant citizenship even to those it initially recognizes as “entitled,” particularly following the most recent legislative amendments. Rather than resolving the issue, the current policy has generated additional cases of statelessness, further exacerbating the crisis. In this regard, the government’s underlying objective, both in the past and at present, does not appear to be the relocation of the Bidoon, but rather the permanent removal of any claim to citizenship—and, by extension, to political rights—while allowing them to remain in the country as legal residents, provided they acquire legal status in another state.

The endgame?

For some observers, the Bidoon issue is not simply the absence of citizenship; it is the exclusion from the very community with which the Bidoon identify. In this regard, the current mass citizenship revocation can be said to function more as a form of “identity stripping” rather than “combating corruption.” Although there might be cases that involve individuals who obtained citizenship through fraud, the Kuwaiti government clearly employs xenophobic rhetoric, with a call for “identity restoration”, claiming that the country has been hijacked by certain nationalities and now needs “purification”.

More worryingly, perhaps, the expansion of citizenship stripping and the tightening of nationality regulations — accompanied by increasingly xenophobic and, at times, explicitly racist public discourse — should be seen as occurring within a broader context of democratic backsliding, further exposing the systemic fragility and structural constraints of Kuwait’s political system. According to Freedom House, Kuwait’s score has dropped ten points since 2013, resulting in its reclassification from Partly Free to Not Free in 2025. Taken together, these developments suggest that the country is entering an increasingly uncertain phase, characterized by the erosion of democratic institutions, the dominance of sovereign decision-making, and increasingly assertive state practices.

Ultimately, rather than resolving long-standing issues of statelessness, Kuwait now risks institutionalizing precarity, normalizing identity stripping, and entrenching social divisions by prioritizing sovereign discretion over legal certainty and rights-based inclusion. This trajectory would not only deepen the plight of the Bidoon, but also raise serious questions about the future of citizenship in Kuwait and the country’s place within the regional and normative order. Unless reversed, it risks reinforcing authoritarian governance practices and entrenching long-term social and political instability.