Suzan El Tahhan
Bidoons: A Statelessness Plight in Kuwait
مجلة الدراسات القانونية واالقتصادية
Kuwaiti security forces ended these demonstrations dispersing protesters with tear
gas, smoke bombs, water cannons, beating, and arresting many of them.28
In response to the previously stated regional events, the international community
suggested that governments who would not address rights violations, would face
grave consequences. On this account, Kuwait's government offered the prospect of
reform. In March 2011, the head of the Bidoons committee, Saleh al-Fadhala,
announced that a new package of eleven rights for Bidoons, including the right to
civil documentation, as well as rights to education, health, in addition to work, would
be protected in new government decrees. But the reforms offered have not yet been
implemented, and Kuwait did not set out a plan for resolving the underlying problem
of statelessness in Kuwait.29
However positive those reforms might seem, nothing of it came to reality till
this moment. Most of Bidoons are living under harsh conditions whether because of
the prior discriminatory culture depriving them of most of their civil rights or
because of their late demonstrations against the government that made many of them
targeted either for their political opinions opposing to the ruling system or their
imputed political views of such opposition.
I.D. Forms of Discrimination
Bidoons are primarily the victims of a widespread process of discrimination in
Kuwait. Bidoons are deprived of many rights that are protected under the umbrella
of international law. Some Bidoons have officially been subject to deportation,
although there are no reports of these orders being carried out in practice. In Kuwait,
28
Human Rights Watch, Prisoners of the Past: Kuwaiti Bidoons and the Burden of Statelessness, 13 June 2011,
P.12, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4df7191b2.html [accessed 23 December 2015].
29
Ibid
14