Taking a taxi during a recent business trip to Kuwait, it was apparent the situation for Kuwait’s stateless Bedouins, known locally as the Bidoon, has not improved.

“I can’t get a proper job,” says Omar, a Bidoon running an unofficial taxi business. “I have no rights and can’t travel as I have no passport.”

Omar’s struggle is not uncommon, with more than an estimated 100,000 stateless Bedouin Arabs living in Kuwait. Despite becoming increasingly proactive in recent years, with several protests being held to try and raise awareness of their plight, there is still no sign of a resolution to the problem.

The imprisonment in February of a stateless Bedouin for five years for criticising Kuwait’s emir during protests in March 2014 conveys the perils facing the population in their quest for recognition.

Access to services

While the economic situation of the Bidoon varies significantly, with some running their own illegal companies and others living in abject poverty, they all share the same problem with regards to access to healthcare, education and travel. The government says it only believes 34,000 Bidoon are genuinely Kuwaiti, claiming the rest are Arabs from other countries, who discarded their passports upon entry to the oil-rich state, which was formed in 1961.

“The status of the Bidoon has not changed: the state still considers them ‘illegal residents’,” says Claire Beaugrand, researcher at the regionally-based Institute Francais du Proche-Orient. “They depend on a new state agency set up in November 2010, which is called the Central System to Remedy the Status of Illegal Residents.”

While the establishment of the body was a step forward, little has changed in reality.

Fragile rights

“The Bidoon are still in some legal conundrum even though the government’s decision [with Law] 409/2011 - to issue official papers giving recognition - did relieve some pressure on them; their rights are still very fragile,” says Beaugrand. “If security has flagged them in the central system, they won’t have access to education and health [services]. Many complain of racism.”

In November 2014, the assistant undersecretary for nationality, passports and residency affairs at Kuwait’s Interior Ministry, Major Mazen al-Jarrah al-Sabah, announced that the ministry was in negotiations with the Comoros Islands, a small, impoverished archipelago off the coast of Mozambique in the Indian Ocean, to provide citizenship for the Bidoon.

The government of the Comoros passed legislation in 2008 to allow citizenship to be sold, and has since managed to attract millions of dollars from Gulf states looking to resolve issues of stateless populations. The UAE has reportedly paid the small island $200m to provide citizenship to several stateless people in the period since.

Proponents of the Comoros scheme say it will enable Kuwaiti citizens to register for healthcare and education services, which they cannot currently do. However, the proposition is unlikely to attract much interest from the Bidoon.

Clash of expectations

“There is a clash of expectations,” says Beaugrand. “Some, if not the majority, of the Bidoon are convinced they are entitled to Kuwaiti citizenship. They don’t want this third country’s nationality.”

While citizenship of a third country might allow access to greater services within the country, it would also make it easier for Kuwait to issue deportation notices.

“Probably an ulterior motive may be that they can easily be deported,” says a political analyst reporting on the region. “It is difficult to deport people if they have no country to go to.”
As part of efforts to come to a solution, elements of the Bidoon community have formed protests movements, including Group29 in 2013, to raise awareness of their situation and to change the perception in many segments of Kuwaiti society that they are illegal immigrants.

Cracking down

However, while Kuwait has traditionally been more tolerant of protests and has allowed a liberal press, this has started to change in the past few years following unrest elsewhere in the region. Bidoon movements, along with other protest and opposition groups, have been met with an increasingly authoritative response from the authorities.

“People in Kuwait are more assertive about safeguarding their freedoms [than others in the Gulf], but they have been under attack from the security forces for saying things they previously would have got away with saying,” says Kristian Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at Rice University in the US.

“They had a very active opposition in Kuwait until 2012, until the spill-over of opposition into the streets. This alarmed the authorities and as they cracked down, it resulted in the opposition boycotting parliament.”

Little interest

As the country now contains third-generation Bidoon, including many unregistered children, there is no sign of an immediate solution to the problem. While plans to offer third-country citizenship may seem like a step forward to the outside world, there is likely to be little interest from stateless Kuwaitis.

With foreign governments reluctant to become involved with what is considered essentially an internal issue, the Bidoon will need to rely on their own groups and assistance from international human rights organisations to lobby for an improved future.