S TAT E L E S S B Y D E C R E E Cases relating to national security and other complex situations must be considered carefully, transparently and be based on objectively verifiable evidence; they, too, must comply with Kuwaitʼs obligations. Article 9 of Kuwaitʼs Constitution states that “The family is the foundation of society”. The retroactive application of citizenship revocation, depriving nationality from those who are now dead, and upon whom successor generations, including young families and children depend for their own citizenship violates the principle that a person not be held responsible for an act s/he did not do. Such families and their children invariably have no meaningful or effective links to any other country save Kuwait. GoK conduct on this point alone violates Kuwaitʼs own Constitutional guarantee to support the family, along with a tens of rights guaranteed by treaty. Gender discrimination has been at the heart of the Amirʼs policies: over the 2024-2026 period, the GoK has deprived thousands of women of all their rights by making them stateless or putting them in at least temporary limbo despite them having obeyed relevant laws in becoming Kuwaiti in previous years and decades. And they have done so amidst GoK misdirection that the Amirʼs government has advanced the place of women in Kuwaiti society. Kuwait is a prosperous country. Its funding of various humanitarian and philanthropic bodies and agencies insulates the Amir, Mishal al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and his government from outright condemnation. For example, on 24 May 2025, amidst industrial-scale citizenship stripping by the GoK, Filippo Grandi, the then United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, took part in the first "strategic dialogue” with the GoK and “praised the State of Kuwait's leading support for refugees throughout the world [...]”.148 Filippo Grandi spoke of “enhancing the long-term partnership between the two sides” at which “The two sides underscored [...] the depth of the humanitarian partnership dating back to decades ago and the State of Kuwait's keenness on backing international aid for the refugees and the needy throughout the globe.”149 Perhaps emboldened by that lack of global approbrium, the GoK has continued to violate a catalogue of human rights. Can they ever be held accountable? In short, the government has escaped accountability for enacting policies that have deprived, on the basis of a supposed national or ethnic origin, a whole class of women and their children of rights. Scholar Cóman Kennyʼs 2020 article, Legislated Out of Existence: Mass Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality Resulting in Statelessness as an International Crime suggests that mass arbitrary deprivation of nationality leading to statelessness could constitute a crime against humanity, as a form of persecution or “other inhumane acts.”150 Finally, our organisations conclude that the Amir, Mishal al-Ahmad al-Sabah and the GoK, are either not aware of or have chosen to ignore or reject the 2013 report by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, addressing Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality.151 For that reason, we re-iterate a selection of its Conclusions and recommendations: 38. The right of every individual to a nationality is clearly regulated in international human rights law, which provides for the explicit recognition of that right. International human rights law also explicitly provides for the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality. 53

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