9 2 INCLUDE, CONSULT & ENGAGE IN DIALOGUE We invite activists and NGOs to make their expertise available and those in positions of power, to have open consultation and meaningful and constructive dialogue with affected communities, and commit to including stateless people on equal terms by: • • • • 3 consulting with activists and affected communities; building trust and strengthening solidarity with stateless communities; meeting the needs and priorities of affected communities and ensuring their meaningful participation; and facilitating wider discourse within society and institutions on equality, inclusion and the right to nationality. BUILD BACK BETTER We invite all actors to learn the hard lessons that the pandemic has taught us and invest in future-proofing, ensuring a lasting commitment to breaking down the pervasive injustice, indignity, inequality, deprivation and exclusion that stateless people face, focusing on: • • • • • • implementing reforms to address discriminatory laws, policies and practices; redressing the intergenerational disadvantage and legacy of statelessness; being accountable to stateless communities and activists; monitoring the performance and progress of states; ensuring access to justice and reparations for stateless people; and sustainably investing in inclusive societies. METHODOLOGY AND APPROACH Loss – the question marks in this picture, depicted on the report cover - may represent questions as to ‘what could have been’ in a Bidoon person’s life. From a project perspective, they also can represent the many conceptual, methodological, and practical questions we had to grapple with, as we designed this project in challenging circumstances, and with a very limited budget. This text echoes and builds on the findings set out in researcher Areej Alshammiry’s comprehensive 2021 article for Statelessness and Citizenship Review, Covid-19, and the Bidoon in Kuwait: Pandemic of Statelessness Vulnerabilities?8 This text is intended as a companion to that article. In July 2020, SALAM DHR conducted an open, online consultation. It constituted a two-hour online workshop-conversation based on successive themes relating to stateless persons’ lives in Kuwait. SALAM DHR facilitated participation, opinion sharing, and communication among at least two generations of stateless Bidoon activists, with a marginal majority of male participants. The majority of the younger female activists had a university education. Although the names of some activists have been withheld for their protection, the group included Ahmad Jaber (Benswait) and Abdulhakim al-Fadhli - amongst many others. SALAM DHR members Drewery Dyke and Abbas Taleb took part, along with the Kuwaiti lawyer Omniya Ashraf, amongst many others. The event featured 30-40 voices at any time. In May 2021, the project team established invitation-only WhatsApp and Signal groups in order to develop the core theme and scope of questions examined in this study. These also provided an ongoing channel for key participants to convey concerns, developments, and thoughts. From September-October 2021, SALAM DHR, in consultation with three stateless rights activists, developed a 29-question survey (annex 4). Between October-December 2021, 104 members of the stateless Bidoon community took part in the survey. They provided detailed answers about their lives in Kuwait and the impact of the pandemic. The largest concentration of participants (29%) lived in al-Jahra (Jahra), a town roughly 30 kilometres 8 Statelessness and Citizenship Review (2021), https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal/article/download/301/155/ (the link redirects to download the article), accessed 7 June 2022.