Suzan El Tahhan Bidoons: A Statelessness Plight in Kuwait ‫مجلة الدراسات القانونية واالقتصادية‬ applications. Such families are stuck in Jordan waiting for either the United Kingdom embassy or the UNHCR office to give a helping hand. This research is an analytical study with a qualitative rather than quantitative approach. My main target using such methodologies is to present an applied paper proposing a detailed analysis of this socio-legal predicament. I. GENERAL BACKGROUND I.A. Who Are Bidoons? The Arabic word, "Bidoon," is used to denote long-time residents of Kuwait who are stateless. The Kuwaiti government refused to grant citizenship to Bidoons even those who were born in Kuwait or has been residents for decades. This left Bidoons to be the illegal residents of Kuwait.3 There are presently at least 500,000 stateless Bidoons in the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia. The largest group is in Kuwait.4 The estimated number of Bidoons in Kuwait “ranges from 90,000 to 130,000, less than half the number who resided in the country prior to Iraq's invasion in 1990”5. In their World Report 2016, Human Rights Watch stated that at least 105,702 Bidoons residents of Kuwait remain stateless. Some Bidoons activists say that the actual number of Bidoons in Kuwait is closer to 240,000, reflecting the government's failure to update its statistics.6 However, it is hard to reach accurate calculations of 3 Human Rights Watch, Kuwait: Security Forces Forcibly Disperse Stateless Residents, 4 May 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4fab6bec2.html [accessed 19 December 2015] 4 Abas Shiblak, Statelessness “The lost tribes of Arabia”, Forced Migration Review, FMR32, April 2009, P.38, available at: www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR32/37-38.pdf 5 Refugees International, Kuwait: State of Exclusion, 25 July 2007, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/47a6ee9bd.html [accessed 22 December 2015] 6 Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2014’ (page 2), available at: http://www.hrw.org/world--‐ report/2014/country--‐ chapters/kuwait?page=2. Date accessed:18 May 2016. 6