Kuwait keeps poverty class Stateless and Represssed

Kuwait: Stateless ‘Bidun’ Denied Rights
Fifty Years of Waiting, but Government Offers Only Handouts
June 13, 2011

During February and March 2011, hundreds of stateless Bidun took to the streets in Kuwait to demand government action on their claims for citizenship, as well as access to other rights.

For 50 years, Kuwait has dawdled in reviewing Bidun citizenship claims, while creating a straightjacket of regulations that leave them in poverty and extreme uncertainty. Kuwait has every resource it needs to solve this problem, but chooses to stall instead.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch

(Kuwait City) – Kuwait has not made good on its decades of promises to address citizenship claims for more than 106,000 stateless Bidun residents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 63-page report, “Prisoners of the Past: Kuwaiti Bidun and the Burden of Statelessness,” describes how in Kuwait, one of the world’s richest countries, the Bidun live under the radar of normal society, vulnerable and without protection. Many live in poverty. Kuwait considers the Bidun “illegal residents.” The government has denied them essential documentation, including birth, marriage, and death certificates, as well as access to free government schools and legal employment opportunities. …more