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Crying "Peaceful, peaceful, peaceful," Kuwaiti bidoon fathers and their children along with a small number of women stood up for their right to a nationality and concomitant rights in the cities of Jahra, Sulabiya, and Al-Ahmedi today.  However, instead of responding with real concrete solutions or trustworthy promises, their request was met with a burst of armored vehicles, shots of tear gas, brutal beatings, and a large number of arbitrary arrests. As a police helicopter circled overhead one man said, "See what democracy looks like in Kuwait." A carefully hand-lettered sign read, "We are not animals." Others expressed their personal pain for being unable to provide essential sustenance for their families and for lacking the right of citizenship. Out of sheer necessity, the frustrated residents continued to call for change as uniformed special forces left clouds of gas, terrified children, and needless injury in their wake.

In late February, Kuwait’s bidoon publicly and collectively called for national recognition of their rights, and in response the government agreed that a parliamentary discussion would take place in the session following the Independence and Liberation Day holiday. But on March 8 and 9, lawmakers ignored their commitment and voted not to prioritize the discussion, must less to codify rights. Thus, today’s events were primarily triggered by the latest in a string of broken promises to discuss and legalize the civil rights and nationality of the 90,000-100,000 people who live in the country as stateless persons. Lack of legal status impacts all areas of life for bidoon: identity, family life, mental and physical health, residence, education, livelihood, political participation, and freedom of movement.

In Kuwait, nationality is deemed a matter relating to sovereignty and courts cannot review sovereign actions of the state.  Kuwaiti bidoon (also bedoon, bedoun, bidun) did not become stateless as a result of war, forced migration, or redrawing of borders between states. It was an absence of permanent borders that gave rise, in large part, to the problem of statelessness.  The bidoon cannot petition the courts to have their citizenship claims adjudicated. Furthermore, citizenship in Kuwait is passed to children through their fathers, not their mothers.

As RI has previously noted, the Arabic word “bidoon,” means “without” and is short for “bidoon jinsiya” (without citizenship).  Many bidoon are descendants of Bedouin tribes that roamed freely across the borders of present day Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq. Some are stateless because their ancestors failed to understand the importance of citizenship or did not want to belong to any one country. Others were living outside the city walls or were illiterate. As a result, they did not or could not apply for nationality, though the majority had and still have legal documents that prove settlement in Kuwait earlier than the establishment of the state. Bidoon were included in the 1965 government census, indicating they were considered Kuwaiti citizens.

After 1985, however, the government took a number of punitive steps to destroy the hope of citizenship. Again after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, the government stepped up its effort to strip their rights. An atmosphere of intimidation continues to plague the community.

But in the final analysis, no one should have to stand on the street to secure what has been identified by the world community as a human right – or as a Human Rights Watch colleague recently reminded me is not a gift to be given, but a right. Indeed, there should be immediate and transparent review of each and every case of statelessness – with an eye toward granting nationality.