doing so, then the removal of those rights and the specific consequences of doing so, can be so significantly discriminatory as to amount to serious harm tantamount to being persecuted’.277 The RSAA concluded that this was the case here.278 Moreover, the arbitrary revocation of the appellant’s citizenship was for reason of her Christianity. The RSAA therefore found objective evidence of a real chance that the appellant would be persecuted for reason of her religion if she were to return to Israel. The New Zealand RSAA has also held that, independently of whether or not an applicant is able to return, the Kuwaiti government’s policies of 1985, declaring Bidoons to be illegal residents, resulted in years of institutionalized and ‘systematic form of discrimination against the Bedoon in an effort to drive them out of the country’.279 The Authority further explained that ‘The Bedoon today live in abject poverty and are not entitled to welfare’. 280 It therefore concluded that ���a restrictions on the appellant’s social and economic rights would continue to operate against him’ if he were to be returned to Kuwait, including his right to work and his right to an adequate standard of living (Articles 6 and 11 ICESCR, respectively),281 and that these ‘considered cumulatively together with the precariousness of his existence’ constitute persecution for lack of nationality.282 This approach was confirmed a few years later by the RSAA, which noted that the appellant: was denied access to free education, health care and other social benefits, barred form employment, denied basic official documents … vulnerable to arrest and the threat of deportation and was restricted in his ability to leave and return to Kuwait. The curtailment of the right of bidoons to take up employment in the public or private sector or otherwise earn a living, in particular, condemned the appellant’s family to economic hardship.283 The Authority highlighted a ‘pattern of historical discrimination and in particular, the manner in which citizenship has been used by the ruling elite “to organize and define the internal power relationships”’284 clearly suggesting that such persecutory treatment was for reasons of (lack of) nationality and membership of the social group of Bidoons. This finding was confirmed in another case involving a Bidoon, who although he could have returned to Kuwait as a matter of fact, on a false passport, using a smuggler or agent, he would be detained, most likely indefinitely, and at real risk of ‘being persecuted for reasons of race, Ibid, para.106. Ibid, para.111. 279 NZ RSAA, Refugee Appeal No. 71687, decision of 28 September 1999, p.19. 280 Ibid, p.18. 281 Ibid p.29. 282 Ibid, p.20, referring to Hathaway’s definition of persecution as the sustained or systemic denial of basic or core human right or the denial of human dignity in an important way, in James C. Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status, Butterworths, 1991. 283 Appeal No.74467, decision of 1 September 2004, para.75. 284 Appeal No.74467, para.94. 277 278 49