‘Stateless Overnight’: Kuwait strips over 37,000, mostly women, of citizenship

In a shocking move, Kuwait has stripped more than 37,000 individuals, mainly women—some of whom have been on Kuwaiti soil for over 20 years—of the citizenship they had gained through marriage.

This move is part of the “reformist” initiative led by Emir Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, and its objective is to restrict nationality to those with blood ties and reshape Kuwaiti identity after years of political crisis, said an AFP report.

Lama, who is in her 50s, was shocked to know that she was no longer a Kuwaiti. The harsh reality dawned on her when her credit card payment for her weekly workout class in Kuwait City was declined. She came to know that her bank account was temporarily frozen because her nationality, acquired through marriage, had been revoked.

“It was a shock,” said the grandmother in her 50s, originally from Jordan, who requested that a pseudonym be used, fearing a backlash from the authorities.

“To be a law-abiding citizen for more than 20 years and then wake up one day to find out you’re no longer a citizen... that’s not okay at all,” she said.

The mass revocation is part of a reformist agenda spearheaded by Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who dissolved parliament and suspended parts of the constitution five months after taking power in December 2023.

The citizenship policy is aimed at restricting nationality to those with blood ties to the tiny, oil-rich nation, reshaping the Kuwaiti identity, and potentially trimming its electorate after years of political crisis, said analysts.

Emir pledged to deliver Kuwait to its original people, clean and free from impurities

In a televised speech to the country of nearly five million—only a third of them Kuwaitis—the emir pledged in March to “deliver Kuwait to its original people clean and free from impurities”.

Lama is among more than 37,000 people, including at least 26,000 women, who have lost Kuwaiti nationality since August, though some media reports indicate that the real number could be much higher.

“While large-scale citizenship revocations are not unheard of in Kuwait, the volume is definitely unprecedented,” said Bader al-Saif, assistant professor of history at Kuwait University.

Kuwait already has a big stateless community of around 100,000 Bidoon people. The Bidoon are an Arab minority mostly descended from nomadic tribes known as Bedouin who settled in Kuwait but were not included as citizens at the time of the country’s independence in 1961.

The latest measure abolishes naturalisation by marriage, which only applied to women, and revokes citizenship granted to wives since 1987. As per official data, 38,505 women were naturalised by marriage from 1993 to 2020.

Others naturalised for their achievements, including pop singer Nawal The Kuwaiti and actor Dawood Hussain, have also lost their citizenship.

‘Overnight, I became stateless’

“Overnight, I became stateless,” said Amal, a businesswoman who had been Kuwaiti for nearly two decades.

Many find themselves in legal limbo as they seek to restore their previous nationality.

While Kuwait's parliament is a rarity in the monarchical Gulf, its tiered citizenship system limits political rights to those born to a Kuwaiti father.

Following the 1990 invasion by Iraq, naturalised Kuwaitis were granted voting rights after 20 years of citizenship, as were children born after their father’s naturalisation.

But the new leadership in Kuwait has an exclusionary vision of Kuwaiti nationalism and seeks to keep out people who lack deep roots. Initially launched as a crackdown on fraudsters, the move was welcomed, but the mood quickly changed.

A Kuwaiti man whose wife lost her citizenship said the government was equating “innocent women and fraudsters”.

Authorities promise that the women will be treated as Kuwaiti and can avail all social benefits but have lost any political rights.