‫مجلة الدراسات القانونية واالقتصادية‬ Suzan El Tahhan Bidoons: A Statelessness Plight in Kuwait Introduction In 2015, I had the pleasure to intern at the UNHCR office in Jordan, one of the most active UNHCR offices worldwide. Throughout my internship period, I have been exposed to a wide array of compelling international law issues. Consequently, it has been tough to pick just one topic for writing my paper. However, as a big fan of UNHCR's I BELONG campaign to end statelessness by 2024 since it had been launched in November 2014, I chose to follow my passion and convey my experience with the stateless Bidoons profile hoping that one day this paper contributes to ending their tragic stateless status. Bidoons mainly live in Kuwait where the Kuwaiti government discriminates against them and categorizes the population as "illegal residents"; however, authorities used to recognize them as part of the local population besides potential citizens during the first twenty-five years of Kuwait's statehood.1 Human Rights Watch published an article in 2011 about Bidoons’ participation in demonstrations calling on authorities to address their citizenship claims; but the Kuwaiti government suppressed such movements 2. The cases I observed during my internship with the UNHCR in Jordan showed that in 2011 and afterward, many Bidoons men fled to the United Kingdom, got refugee status or temporary leave to remain there, and are now trying to bring their families who fled to Jordan to join them in the United Kingdom by applying to the British embassy for family reunification. Many families' files have been put on hold in UNHCR for a couple of years, waiting for the United Kingdom embassy to decide on the family reunification 1 Human Rights Watch, Prisoners of the Past: Kuwaiti Bidoons and the Burden of Statelessness, 13 June 2011, P.48, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4df7191b2.html [accessed 21 December 2015]. 2 Human Rights watch, JUNE 13, 2011, “Kuwait: Stateless ‘Bidoons’ Denied Rights Fifty Years of Waiting, but Government Offers Only Handouts”, available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/06/13/kuwait-stateless-Bidoonsdenied-rights 5