Introduction and Summary 1. Equality Now is an international human rights organization with ECOSOC status working to protect and promote the rights of women and girls worldwide since 1992. Campaign Abolish Article 153 is a local non-governmental organization led by a group of activists, concerned with ending all forms of violence against women in Kuwait. Kuwaiti Women without Limits is a group volunteers, believes in Kuwaiti citizenship rights and seeks to achieve justice among members of the community. The Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights mobilizes international action for the removal of gender-discriminatory provisions from all nationality laws, through its coalition of national, regional and international organizations and activists, including steering committee members Equality Now, Equal Rights Trust, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, Women’s Learning Partnership and Women’s Refugee Commission. 2. In this submission, Equality Now provides information as stipulated in the Universal Periodic Review (Third Cycle): information and guidelines for relevant stakeholders’ written submissions. The submission details our concerns regarding Kuwait’s discriminatory provisions in the nationality law, and Articles 182 and 153 of the Kuwaiti Penal Code (Impunity for Rapist and “Honor” killing crime). We make key recommendations for action by the government of Kuwait to better address these areas of concern. Discrimination in Nationality Law No. 15 / 1959 3. We remain concerned that the Kuwaiti nationality law of 1959 does not recognize the right of Kuwaiti women to transmit their nationality to non-Kuwaiti spouses and children on equal terms with Kuwaiti men. Article 2 of the law states that “any person born in, or outside, Kuwait whose father is a Kuwaiti national shall be Kuwaiti national himself”. Article 3 states that Kuwaiti nationality may be granted by Decree upon the recommendation of the Minister of the Interior to any person [upon his attaining his majority who was] born in, or outside, Kuwait to a Kuwaiti mother whose father is unknown or whose kinship to his father has not been legally established. The Minister of the Interior may afford to such children, being minors, the same treatment as that afforded to Kuwaiti nationals until they reach their majority. Article 11 provides that the children of a Kuwaiti national man, being minors, shall also lose their Kuwaiti nationality if they themselves acquire ipso facto the nationality of the State according to the law of which their father has become naturalized if that law so provides. Such children shall reacquire Kuwaiti nationality upon informing the Minister of the Interior within two years following their attaining the age of majority of their wish to do so. 4. The Nationality Law of Kuwait, which denies women equality with men in terms of nationality, undermines a woman’s status as an equal citizen and contradicts the Kuwaiti Constitution, which stipulates in Article 29 that “all people are equal in human dignity and in public rights and duties before the law…” and in Article 7 that “justice, liberty and equality are the pillars of society...”. 2