Important political issues in Kuwait include rights for immigrant workers, stateless people, and education reform. Kuwait has the largest number of stateless people in the entire region. The Bedoon issue in Kuwait is largely sectarian.
Foreign workers Since the 1970s, the Kuwaiti government annually announces that Kuwait will reduce the number of expatriates. Human rights organizations frequently criticize Kuwait for the human rights abuses toward foreign nationals. Foreign nationals account for 70% of Kuwait's total population. The kafala system leaves foreign nationals prone to exploitation. Administrative deportation is very common in Kuwait for minor offenses, including minor traffic violations. Kuwait is one of the world's worst offenders in human trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals are subjected to numerous human rights abuses including inhumane conditions of involuntary servitude by employers in Kuwait. They are subjected to physical and sexual abuse, non-payment of wages, poor work conditions, threats, confinement to the home, and withholding of passports to restrict their freedom of movement.
Repeated abusers include M A Al-Kharafi & Sons and its subsidiary Kharafi National that have been cited by human rights organizations and the United States Department of State Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Kuwait. Many human rights organizations have accused Kuwait of apartheid policies toward foreign nationals.
Kuwait is considered one of the most xenophobic countries in the world. A recent proposal by a Kuwaiti lawmaker restricts all expats to only five years residence in Kuwait, all expats will be deported after living 5 years in Kuwait. Another Kuwaiti lawmaker recently called for the deportation of 1.4 million expats, the lawmaker believes 280,000 expats should be deported annually. Kuwait also banned expatriates from driving.
In August 2008, Abdullah Al-Roumi declared that he was going to draft a law to scrap Kuwait's "kafeel" foreign worker sponsorship system, under which expatriates must be sponsored by a local employer to get a work permit: "The government should be the only kafeel... We have scores of bachelors residing in Kuwait with an equal number of crimes. Many are caused due to the 'trading with humans' issue which taints the reputation of Kuwait."
In the political debates over the Kuwaiti minimum wage, some politicians have dismissed past wage increases as "too small" and not enough to meet the steep hikes in consumer prices. On February 21, 2008, the country approved a 120 dinar ($440) monthly pay rise for nationals in the public and private sectors after inflation hit 7.3%, a 15-year high. It also decided to raise by 50 dinars ($183) the pay of foreigners employed by the government. In response, Al-Enezi said, "We reject this increase because it is well below expectations. We urge the government to review its decision."
On September 22, 2008, politician Saleh Al-Mulla demanded from Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Bader Al-Duwailah a list of companies involved in human trafficking. Mulla also asked about the measures taken against the violating companies and other steps that would be taken in the future to prevent such violations from taking place.
Bedoon
History Kuwait has the largest number of stateless people in the entire region. Most stateless Bedoon of Kuwait belong to the northern tribes, especially the Al-Muntafiq tribal confederation. A minority of stateless Bedoon in Kuwait belong to the 'Ajam community.
Under the terms of the Kuwait Nationality Law 15/1959, all the Bedoon in Kuwait are eligible for Kuwaiti nationality by naturalization. In practice, it is widely believed that Sunnis of Persian descent or tribal Saudis can readily achieve Kuwaiti naturalization whilst Bedoon of Iraqi tribal ancestry cannot. As a result, many Bedoon in Kuwait feel pressured to hide their background.
From 1965 until 1985, the Bedoon were treated as Kuwaiti citizens and guaranteed citizenship: they had free access to education, health care and all the other privileges of citizenship. The stateless Bedoon constituted 80-90% of the Kuwaiti Army in the 1970s and 1980s until the Gulf War.
In 1985 at the height of the Iran–Iraq War, the Bedoon were reclassified as "illegal residents" and denied Kuwaiti citizenship and its accompanying privileges. The Iran–Iraq War threatened Kuwait's internal stability and the authorities feared the sectarian background of the stateless Bedoon. 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.
In 1985, the then emir, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, escaped an assassination attempt. After the assassination attempt, the government changed the Bedoon's status from that of legal residents to illegal residents. By 1986, the Bedoon were fully excluded from the same social and economic rights as Kuwaiti citizens.
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, travel and education. They are not permitted to educate their children in state schools and universities.
In 1995, Human Rights Watch reported that there were 300,000 stateless Bedoon, and this number was formally repeated by the British government.
According to several human rights organizations, the State of Kuwait is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide against the stateless Bedoon. In 1995, it was reported 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 with death if they returned to their homes in Kuwait City. As a result, many of the stateless Bedoon fled to Iraq, where they remain stateless people even today. The Kuwaiti government also stands accused of attempting to falsify their nationalities in official state documents. There have been reports of forced disappearances and mass graves of Bedoon.
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. 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."
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. 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 [when] many have lived in the Kuwaiti area for many centuries."
By 2004, the Bedoon accounted for only 40% of the Kuwaiti Army, a major reduction from their presence in the 1970s and 1980s. 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. The Bedoon are generally categorized into three groups: stateless tribespeople, stateless police/military and the stateless children of Kuwaiti women who married Bedoon men. According to the Kuwaiti government, there are only 93,000 "documented" Bedoon in Kuwait. In 2018, the Kuwaiti government claimed that it would naturalize up to 4,000 stateless Bedoon per year but this is considered unlikely. In 2019, the Iranian embassy in Kuwait announced that it offers Iranian citizenship to stateless Bedoon of Iranian ancestry.
In recent years, the rate of suicide among Bedoon has risen sharply.
Demographic engineering The State of Kuwait formally has an official Nationality Law that grants non-nationals a legal pathway to obtaining citizenship. However, as access to citizenship in Kuwait is autocratically controlled by the Al Sabah ruling family it is not subject to any external regulatory supervision. The naturalization provisions within the Nationality Law are arbitrarily implemented and lack transparency. The lack of transparency prevents non-nationals from receiving a fair opportunity to obtain citizenship. Consequently, the Al Sabah ruling family have been able to manipulate naturalization for politically motivated reasons. In the three decades after independence in 1961, the Al Sabah ruling family naturalized hundreds of thousands of foreign Bedouin immigrants predominantly from Saudi Arabia. By 1980, as many as 200,000 immigrants were naturalized in Kuwait. Throughout the 1980s, the Al Sabah's politically motivated naturalization policy continued. The naturalizations were not regulated nor sanctioned by Kuwaiti law. The exact number of naturalizations is unknown but it is estimated that up to 400,000 immigrants were unlawfully naturalized in Kuwait. The foreign Bedouin immigrants were mainly naturalized to alter the demographic makeup of the citizen population in a way that made the power of the Al Sabah ruling family more secure. As a result of the politically motivated naturalizations, the number of naturalized citizens exceeds the number of Bedoon in Kuwait. The Al Sabah ruling family actively encouraged foreign Bedouin immigrants to migrate to Kuwait. The Al Sabah ruling family favored naturalizing Bedouin immigrants because they were considered loyal to the ruling family, unlike the politically active Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian expats in Kuwait. The naturalized citizens were predominantly Sunni Saudi immigrants from southern tribes. Accordingly, none of the stateless Bedoon in Kuwait belong to the Ajman tribe.