Most notably, Kuwait's handling of the stateless Bedoon crisis has come under substantial criticism from international human rights organisations and the United Nations.
[2][3] Kuwait also faces significant criticism for its citizenship revocation policy as well as its human rights violations against foreign nationals, women, and LGBT people.
[7] The government has the authority to strip individuals of their Kuwaiti citizenship without providing any reason and Kuwait's courts are not allowed to handle appeals.
[5] The lack of judicial oversight means that citizenship revocation occurs without a fair trial or an opportunity for appeal.
[5] The lack of transparency and recourse in the process of revoking citizenship, as well as its arbitrary application, is a violation of human rights.
"[5][6] Human rights organizations have raised concerns over the potential for statelessness, lack of due process in citizenship revocations, and the discriminatory impact on vulnerable groups, including naturalized Bedoon, elderly women, Shia Muslims, and children.
- A human rights defender disputed her claims, stating that in many cases this is not true and citizenship revocation can be random.
[2][27][28] The Iran–Iraq War threatened Kuwait's internal stability and the authorities feared the sectarian background of the stateless Bedoon.
In 1995, Human Rights Watch reported that there were 300,000 stateless Bedoon, and this number was formally repeated by the British government.
[32][33] According to several human rights organizations, the State of Kuwait is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide against the stateless Bedoon.
[24] In 1995, it was reported in the British parliament that the Al Sabah ruling family had deported 150,000 stateless Bedoon to refugee camps in the Kuwaiti desert near the Iraqi border with minimal water, insufficient food and no basic shelter, and that they were threatened with death if they returned to their homes in Kuwait City.
[3][37][38][39][40][41][21] The 1995 Human Rights Watch report stated: "The totality of the treatment of the Bedoons amounts to a policy of denationalization of native residents, relegating them to an apartheid-like existence in their own country.
"[33] British MP George Galloway stated: "Of all the human rights atrocities committed by the ruling family in Kuwait, the worst and the greatest is that against the people known as the Bedoons.
[2] The State of Kuwait formally has an official Nationality Law that grants non-nationals a legal pathway to obtaining citizenship.
[47] However, as access to citizenship in Kuwait is autocratically controlled by the Al Sabah ruling family it is not subject to any external regulatory supervision.
[48][49][50][51][52][1][53][54][55] In the three decades after independence in 1961, the Al Sabah ruling family naturalized hundreds of thousands of foreign Bedouin immigrants predominantly from Saudi Arabia.
[57][51] The foreign Bedouin immigrants were mainly naturalized to alter the demographic makeup of the citizen population in a way that made the power of the Al Sabah ruling family more secure.
[58][60][59][62][16][63][61] The Kuwaiti authorities permit the forgery of hundreds of thousands of politically motivated naturalizations[1][57] whilst simultaneously denying citizenship to the Bedoon.
According to the Home Office, Kuwait is the eighth largest source of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel on small boats.
[65][66][67] In recent years, several Shia citizens have reported cases of torture, forced disappearance, unfair trial, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial punishment, and other human rights abuses.
[68][69][70][71][72][73][74] The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims and United Nations criticized the Kuwaiti authorities' treatment of the so-called "Abdali Cell".
Hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals are subjected to numerous human rights abuses including inhumane conditions of involuntary servitude by employers in Kuwait.
They are subjected to physical and sexual abuse, non-payment of wages, poor work conditions, threats, confinement to the home, and withholding of passports to restrict their freedom of movement.
In July 2018, Kuwaiti fashionista Sondos Alqattan released a controversial video criticising domestic workers from the Philippines.
[83] In November 2021, Egyptian foreign worker Samih Maurice Bowles filed official complaints against Kuwait in front of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment for torture, forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, and other human rights abuses.
The United Nations Working Group warned against the persistent barriers, both in law and in practice, on the path of women's quest for full equality.
Regarding the GGGR subindex, Kuwait ranked 142 of 152 on political empowerment 143 of 153 on health and survival, 120 of 153 on economic opportunity, and 57 of 153 on educational attainment.
[92] Regarding the GGGR subindex, Kuwait ranked 153 of 156 on political empowerment, 94 of 156 on health and survival, 137 of 156 on economic opportunity, and 59 of 156 on educational attainment.