Nomads and the Struggle for a Legal Identity
identity for nomads has gone hand in hand with settlement and assimilation or
with statelessness and exclusion. 23 Between 1960 and 1987, the descendants of
nomadic Bedouin in Kuwait who had no nationality papers were issued identity
documents with the official status of bidoon jinsiyya, or ‘without nationality’,
under a special administrative process. 24 In 1965, the Kuwaiti government made
issuance of a birth certificate compulsory, yet this only entrenched bidoon status
for many former Bedouin. 25 Other Bedouin were naturalised by the Kuwaiti
government, but given an inferior nationality status in exchange for settlement in
urban areas and service in the military or jobs at oil fields. 26 The steady erosion of
human rights for many former Bedouin and their descendants soon followed,
accompanied by a rapid collapse of nomadism. 27
As this comment has shown, obtaining a legal identity remains a serious
problem for nomads in many countries. Solutions may include, for example,
mobile registration clinics and other programs to ease registration for nomads 28
and eliminating bias against nomadism from civil registration laws, policies and
procedures. Yet, as my recent research has also uncovered, establishing a legal
identity has also negatively impacted many nomads, leading to their assimilation
and raising serious questions of how legal identity and human rights intersect for
nomads.
23
24
25
26
27
28
See generally Alexander, ‘The Open Sky or a Brick-and-Mortar School?’ (n 4).
Ang Nga Longva, ‘Citizenship in the Gulf States: Conceptualization and Practice’ in Nils
August Butenschøn, Manuel Sarkis Hassassian and Uri Davis (eds), Citizenship and the State
in the Middle East (Syracuse 2000) 187. See also Al-Nakib (n 14) 12.
Claire Beaugrand, Stateless in the Gulf: Migration, Nationality and Society in Kuwait (Tauris
2018) 88. See also Beaugrand, Statelessness and Transnationalism (n 14) 129.
Longva (n 24) 187. See also Gianluca Parolin, Citizenship in the Arab World (Amsterdam
University Press 2009) 116; Shaul Yanai, The Political Transformation of Gulf Tribal States:
Elitism and the Social Contract in Kuwait, Bahrain and Dubai: 1918–1970s (Sussex
Academic Press 2014) 223–25; Greg Power, ‘The Difficult Development of Parliamentary
Politics in the Gulf’ in David Held and Kristian Ulrichsen, The Transformation of the Gulf:
Politics, Economics and the Global Order (Routledge 2012) 33. See also Jacqueline Ismael,
Kuwait: Dependency and Class in a Rentier State (Florida University Press 1993) 125; Osman
Salih, ‘Kuwait Primary (Tribal) Elections 1975–2008: An Evaluative Study’ (2011) 38(2)
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 141, 144.
Jill Crystal, ‘Public Order and Authority: Policing Kuwait’ in Paul Dresch and James P
Piscatori (eds), Monarchies and Nations: Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the
Gulf (Bloomsbury Academic 2005) 176; Longva (n 24) 185; Lund-Johansen (n 15) 2, 32, 37–
38; Beaugrand, Statelessness in the Gulf (n 25) 124–25; Beaugrand, Statelessness and
Transnationalism (n 14) 149; Abbas Shiblak, ‘Arabia’s Bidoon’ in Brad Blitz and Maureen
Lynch, Statelessness and the Benefits of Citizenship: A Comparative Study (Geneva Academy
of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and International Observatory on
Statelessness 2009) 89; Jill Crystal, ‘Public Order and Authority: Policing Kuwait’ in Paul
Dresch and James P Piscatori (eds), Monarchies and Nations: Globalisation and Identity in
the Arab States of the Gulf (Bloomsbury Academic 2005) 176, 178.
Jérémie Gilbert, ‘Nomadic Territories: A Human Rights Approach to Nomadic Peoples’ Land
Rights’ (2007) 7(4) Human Rights Law Review 681, 681–716.
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