Bedoon

The Bedoon (Arabic: بدون‎ Bidūn Arabic: بدون جنسية‎, "without nationality") are stateless people who are found in several Middle Eastern countries, particularly in Kuwait, Iraq,^[1] and Saudi Arabia.^[2] The largest population of stateless people in the region can been found in Kuwait, where the majority of Bedoon are Shia Muslims^[3][4][5][6] and the status of the community is considered a sectarian issue.^[7] The status of the Kuwaiti Bedoon in particular has drawn parallels with the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, being labelled a humanitarian crisis and drawing accusations of ethnic cleansing.^[8][9][10]

Kuwait[]

The stateless Bedoon of Kuwait belong to the traditional cultural and ethnic grouping known as the northern tribes, with many coming in particular from the Al-Muntafiq tribe.^{[11][12][13][14][15][16][17]} A minority of stateless Bedoon in Kuwait belong to Kuwait's 'Ajam community.^[18] It is estimated that 60-80% of Kuwait's Bedoon are Shia Muslims.^{[3][4][19][11][6][20]} and as a result, it is widely believed that the Bedoon issue in Kuwait is sectarian in nature.^{[3][19][4][5][11][21][6]}

In 1995, the Human Rights Watch reported that there were 300,000 stateless Bedoon, and this number was formally repeated by the British government.^[7][22] In 2013, the UK government estimated that there were 110,729 "documented" Bedoon in Kuwait, without giving a total estimate, but noting that all stateless individuals in Kuwait remain at risk of persecution and human rights breaches.^[23] The Bedoon are generally categorized into three groups: stateless tribespeople, stateless police/military, and the stateless children of Kuwaiti women who married Bedoon men.^[24] According to the Kuwaiti government, there are only 93,000 documented Bedoon in Kuwait.^{[citation needed]}

History[]

From 1965 until 1985, the Bedoon were treated like Kuwaiti citizens and guaranteed citizenship: they had free access to education, health care and all the other privileges of citizenship.^[8] The stateless Bedoon also constituted 80-90% of the Kuwaiti Army in the 1970s and 1980s, up until the 1990 Gulf War.^[24]

In 1985, however, at the height of the Iran–Iraq War, the Bedoon were reclassified as "foreigners" and denied Kuwaiti citizenship and its accompanying privileges.^[8][24][25] The Iran–Iraq War threatened Kuwait's internal stability and the authorities feared the sectarian background of the stateless Bedoon.^[24] The Bedoon issue in Kuwait “overlaps with historic sensitivities about Iraqi influence inside Kuwait”, with many of those denied Kuwaiti nationality being believed to have originated from Iraq.^[26]

In 1985, the then emir Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah also escaped an assassination attempt. It was later that same year that the government changed the Bedoon's status from that of legal residents without nationality to illegal residents.^[24] By 1986, the Bedoon were fully excluded from the same social and economic rights as Kuwaiti citizens, and by 2004, the Bedoon only accounted for 40% of the Kuwaiti Army.^[27]

Since 1986, the Kuwaiti government has refused to grant any form of documentation to the Bedoon including birth certificates, death certificates, identity cards, marriage certificates, and driving licences. The Bedoon also face many restrictions in employment and travel, are not permitted to educate their children in public schools and public universities, and are banned from obtaining driving licenses. In recent years, the rate of suicide among Bedoon has sharply risen.^[8]

Today, in theory, under the terms of the Kuwait Nationality Law 15/1959, all the Bedoon in Kuwait are eligible for Kuwaiti nationality by naturalization.^[10] In practice, Kuwait's Bedoon assert that most of the stateless people who get naturalized are Sunnis of Persian descent or tribal Saudis, but not Bedoon of Iraqi tribal ancestry.^[28] As a result, many Bedoon in Kuwait feel pressured to hide their Shia Muslim background.^[29] In 2018, the Kuwaiti government claimed that it would naturalize up to 4,000 stateless Bedoon per year, but this is considered unlikely.^[28][30] In 2019, the Iranian embassy in Kuwait announced that it would offer Iranian citizenship to stateless Bedoon of Iranian ancestry.^[31][32]

Naturalization law[]

The State of Kuwait formally has an official Nationality Law which grants non-nationals a legal pathway to obtain citizenship. However, access to citizenship in Kuwait is autocratically controlled by the Al Sabah ruling family and is not subject to any external regulatory supervision.^[33] As a result, the manner in which the naturalization provisions within the Nationality Law are implemented lacks transparency, leaving the process open to accusations of being arbitrary and preventing non-nationals from receiving a fair opportunity to obtain citizenship.^[34][35]

The Kuwaiti judicial system's lack of authority to rule on citizenship further complicates the Bedoon crisis, leaving Bedoon with no access to the judiciary to present evidence and plead their case for citizenship.^[35] Although non-nationals constitute 70% of Kuwait's total population, the Al Sabah ruling family persistently denies citizenship to most non-nationals, including those who fully satisfy the requirements for naturalization as stipulated in the state's official Nationality Law.

The Kuwaiti authorities also stand accused of manipulating naturalization for political reasons,^{[34][36][37][38][39][35][40][41][42]} and permitting the forgery of hundreds of thousands of politically motivated naturalizations, while simultaneously denying citizenship to the Bedoon.^[35][43] The politically motivated nature of Kuwait's naturalization regime has been noted by the United Nations, political activists, scholars, researchers, and even members of the Al Sabah family.^{[35][34][36][38][39][37][44][40][45][41][43]} It has been labelled a form of deliberate demographic engineering and likened to Bahrain's politicised naturalization policy.^[34][39][42] Within the GCC countries, politicised naturalization policies are referred to as "political naturalization" (التجنيس السياسي).^[34]

In the three decades after independence in 1961, the Al Sabah ruling family naturalized hundreds of thousands of Bedouin tribesmen, many of them with strong ties to Saudi Arabia.^{[38][45][34][40][36][41][37][35][42][43]} By the year 1980, as many as 200,000 Bedouin tribesmen were naturalized in Kuwait, and in the following decade, the naturalizations continued to be unregulated under Kuwaiti law.^{[45][34][36][38][43]} The total number of naturalizations to date is unknown, but it is estimated that up to 400,000 tribesmen of various origins were naturalized under this regime.^[43][38] This exceeds all estimates of the number of the stateless Bedoon in Kuwait.^[35] It has been asserted that the Al Sabah ruling family naturalized large numbers of Saudi-linked southern tribesmen as a means of consolidating their power,^{[39][34][36][38][42]} and that the ruling family actively encouraging southern tribesmen to migrate to Kuwait and favouring their naturalization applications.^[45] Today, there are no members of Saudi-linked Ajman tribe that remain as stateless Bedoon in Kuwait, for instance, as all have been naturalised.^[36]

Ethnic cleansing[]

According to several human rights organizations, the State of Kuwait is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide against the stateless Bedoon.^[9][14] The Kuwaiti Bedoon crisis has also been compared unfavourably with the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.^[10] In 1995, it was claimed in the British parliament that the Al Sabah ruling family had deported 150,000 stateless Bedoon to refugee camps in the Kuwaiti desert near the Iraqi border with minimal water, insufficient food, and no basic shelter, and that they were threatened, on pain of death, not to return to their homes in Kuwait City.^[22][17] As a result, many of the stateless Bedoon fled to Iraq, where they remain stateless people even today.^[46][1] There have also been reports of disappearances of Bedoon and the discovery of mass graves of presumed disappeared persons.^{[9][47][48][49][50][51][17]} The Kuwaiti government also stands accused of attempting to impose a false identity narrative on the Bedoon.^[52]

The 1995 Human Rights Watch report stated:

"The totality of the treatment of the Bedoons amounts to a policy of denationalization of native residents, relegating them to an apartheid-like existence in their own country. The Kuwaiti government policy of harassment and intimidation of the Bedoons and of denying them the right to lawful residence, employment, travel and movement, contravene basic principles of human rights . . . Denial of citizenship to the Bedoons clearly violates international law . . . Denial of citizenship and lawful residence to Bedoon husbands and children of women who are Kuwaiti citizens violates rules against gender-based discrimination."^[22]

"Denying Bedoons the right to petition the courts to challenge governmental decisions regarding their claims to citizenship and lawful residence in the country violates the universal right to due process of law and equality before the law.By retroactively implementing restrictive citizenship and residency laws, Kuwaiti authorities deprive Bedoons of their vested rights to state citizenhip and residence."^[22]

British MP George Galloway stated:

Of all the human rights atrocities committed by the ruling family in Kuwait, the worst and the greatest is that against the people known as the Bedoons. There are more than 300,000 Bedoons--one third of Kuwait's native population. Half of them--150,000--have been driven into refugee camps in the desert across the Iraqi border by the regime and left there to bake and to rot. The other 150,000 are treated not as second-class or even fifth- class citizens but not as any sort of citizen. They are bereft of all rights.^[22]

It is a scandal that almost no one in the world cares a thing about the plight of 300,000 people, 150,000 of them cast out of the land in which they have lived. Many were born to Kuwaiti mothers, and many of those families have lived in the Kuwaiti area for many centuries. Indeed, given the ruling family's penchant for spending time on the Riviera or in the west end of London, many of them have spent a great deal more time in Kuwait than many of the members of the ruling family.^[22]

Iraq[]

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, many stateless Bedoon from Kuwait migrated to Iraq, most with no recognized nationality or official papers.^[1] There are currently tens of thousands of Kuwaiti stateless Bedoon living in Iraq.^[1] The process to obtain Iraqi citizenship is much simpler than Kuwait due to the presence of judicial court systems reviewing citizenship.^[1] Since August 2017, the UNCHR has been coordinating with Iraqi NGOs to help stateless Bedoon receive Iraqi citizenship.^[1]

United Arab Emirates[]

According to Federal Law No. 17 of the United Arab Emirates Citizenship and Passport Law of Year 1972, any Arab who resided in the Trucial States prior to 1925 is eligible to obtain UAE citizenship.^[53] Many stateless people who lived in the UAE have failed to obtain Emirati passports, either because they have failed to demonstrate that they lived in the region prior to 1925, their roots cannot be traced back to the tribal region, or because they arrived to the region after 1925. Stateless are generally considered immigrants from Baloch or Iranian origin by the UAE. The UAE has also deported some Bedoon people after the Arab Spring.^[54] Although they are not considered Emirati citizens, their status and residence in UAE is legalized. Stateless who are not able to obtain any passport are offered the Comorian passport for free through a government initiative for a citizenship by investment deal worth million of dollars with the government of Comoros and enjoy certain citizenship privileges such as subsidized education and access to government jobs in the UAE.^[55][56][57]

Saudi Arabia[]

Bedoon in Saudi Arabia are not considered Saudi citizens and therefore have no benefits. It has revoked citizenship of certain Saudis in the past too, which means these people become Bidoon. However, they have the right to education, free healthcare , and access to jobs that are not exclusive to citizens. Most of these Bedoon are displaced from Yemen or Jordan and Syria. ^[58][59]

Qatar[]

Qatar has a number of stateless people living within its borders. Qatar has not helped them out; instead it has imprisoned many of them.^[60]

Bahrain[]

Like neighbouring Qatar, Bahrain also has a number of stateless people, some of whom were dissidents.^[61]

See also[]

• Non-citizens (Latvia)

Notes[]