Human rights in Kuwait are a topic of significant concern. Most recently, Kuwait has been facing significant criticism for its citizenship revocation policy. Additionally, Kuwait's treatment of stateless people has come under substantial criticism from international human rights organisations and the United Nations. Kuwait has the largest stateless population in the entire region. Kuwait also faces criticism for its human rights violations against foreign nationals, women, and LGBT people. Although Kuwaiti law (including the Constitution of Kuwait) theoretically pledges to protect all human rights; the enforcement mechanisms designed to help protect human rights are very limited in Kuwait.
Treaties Kuwait is a party to several international human rights treaties, including International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others United Nations Convention Against Torture Convention on the Rights of the Child Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention Abolition of Forced Labour Convention Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention Convention against Discrimination in Education
Citizenship revocation Citizenship revocation is a contentious human rights issue in Kuwait. According to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kuwait has weaponized citizenship revocation as a tool for political control. The government has the authority to revoke Kuwaiti citizenship without a criminal conviction and Kuwait's courts are not allowed to handle appeals. The lack of judicial oversight means that citizenship revocation occurs without a court ruling.
Since March 2024, Kuwait has been revoking the citizenship of many citizens (by decree). In early December 2024, the Emir issued a decree to revoke the Kuwaiti citizenship of several high-profile individuals: singer Nawal Al-Kuwaitia, social media influencer Noha Nabil, and actor Dawood Hussein including his children who were automatically granted Kuwaiti citizenship through paternal affiliation.
By March 2025, Kuwait had revoked the citizenship of 42,000 people in just six months. In October 2025, Mohamad Al-Mail, a political activist and Islamic scholar living in exile in the United Kingdom, was also stripped of his citizenship by decree. In December 2025, it was estimated that as many as 200,000 people have lost their Kuwaiti citizenship. It is one of the largest citizenship revocation policies to ever occur since the Second World War.
The lack of transparency and recourse in the citizenship revocation policy is a violation of international law. The majority of revoked citizenships were legally granted to the wives of Kuwaiti men under Article 8 of the nationality law. Their citizenships are being retroactively revoked after Article 8 was recently repealed by decree, violating international law which prohibits the retroactive application of nationality law. Many individuals with revoked citizenship are taken to the "Central Agency for Illegal Residents," which handles stateless individuals in Kuwait, further deepening the country's stateless population.
Kuwait’s citizenship revocation policy contradicts international treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right to a nationality" and "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality." 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 women, elderly people, and children. For example, the citizenship revocation policy impacts many children, further deepening the number of stateless children in the country.
Neveen Ma'arafi () defended the citizenship revocation policy, claiming that it is being carried out to tackle corruption. Many activists disputed her claims.
Stateless people
History Kuwait has the largest stateless population in the entire region. Most stateless Bedoon of Kuwait belong to the northern tribes, especially the Al-Muntafiq tribal confederation. The linguist Bruce Ingham studied the northern tribes in Kuwait in the mid 20th century. A minority of stateless Bedoon in Kuwait belong to the 'Ajam community.
Under the terms of Article 4 of the Kuwait Nationality Law, the Bedoon in Kuwait are eligible for Kuwaiti nationality by naturalization. In practice, it is widely believed that Sunnis of Persian descent or tribal Saudis can readily achieve Kuwaiti naturalization whilst Bedoon of Iraqi tribal ancestry cannot. As a result, many Bedoon in Kuwait feel pressured to hide their background.
From 1965 until 1985, the Bedoon were treated as Kuwaiti citizens and guaranteed citizenship: they had free access to education, health care and all the other privileges of citizenship. The stateless Bedoon constituted 80-90% of the Kuwaiti Army in the 1970s and 1980s until the Gulf War.
In 1985 at the height of the Iran–Iraq War, the Bedoon were reclassified as "illegal residents" and denied Kuwaiti citizenship and its accompanying privileges. The Iran–Iraq War threatened Kuwait's internal stability and the authorities feared the sectarian background of the stateless Bedoon. The Bedoon issue in Kuwait "overlaps with historic sensitivities about Iraqi influence inside Kuwait", with many of those denied Kuwaiti nationality being believed to have originated from Iraq.
In 1985, the then emir, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, escaped an assassination attempt. After the assassination attempt, the government changed the Bedoon's status from that of legal residents to illegal residents. By 1986, the Bedoon were fully excluded from the same social and economic rights as Kuwaiti citizens.
Since 1986, the Kuwaiti government has refused to grant any form of documentation to the Bedoon, including birth certificates, death certificates, identity cards, marriage certificates, and driving licences. The Bedoon also face many restrictions in employment, travel and education. They are not permitted to educate their children in state schools and universities.
In 1995, Human Rights Watch reported that there were 300,000 stateless Bedoon, and this number was formally repeated by the British government.
According to several human rights organizations, the State of Kuwait is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide against the stateless Bedoon. The Kuwaiti Bedoon crisis resembles the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. 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. As a result, many of the stateless Bedoon fled to Iraq, where they remain stateless people even today. The Kuwaiti government also stands accused of attempting to falsify their nationalities in official state documents. There have been reports of forced disappearances and mass graves of Bedoon.
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. The Kuwaiti government policy of harassment and intimidation of the Bedoons and of denying them the right to lawful residence, employment, travel and movement, contravene basic principles of human rights. Denial of citizenship to the Bedoons clearly violates international law. Denying Bedoons the right to petition the courts to challenge governmental decisions regarding their claims to citizenship and lawful residence in the country violates the universal right to due process of law and equality before the law."
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. There are more than 300,000 Bedoons—one third of Kuwait's native population. Half of them—150,000—have been driven into refugee camps in the desert across the Iraqi border by the regime and left there to bake and to rot. The other 150,000 are treated not as second-class or even fifth-class citizens, but not as any sort of citizen. They are bereft of all rights. It is a scandal that almost no one in the world cares a thing about the plight of 300,000 people, 150,000 of them cast out of the land in which they have lived [when] many have lived in the Kuwaiti area for many centuries."
By 2004, the Bedoon accounted for only 40% of the Kuwaiti Army, a major reduction from their presence in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2013, the UK government estimated that there were 110,729 "documented" Bedoon in Kuwait, without giving a total estimate, but noting that all stateless individuals in Kuwait remain at risk of persecution and human rights breaches. The Bedoon are generally categorized into three groups: stateless tribespeople, stateless police/military and the stateless children of Kuwaiti women who married Bedoon men. According to the Kuwaiti government, there are only 93,000 "documented" Bedoon in Kuwait. In 2018, the Kuwaiti government claimed that it would naturalize up to 4,000 stateless Bedoon per year but this is considered unlikely. In 2019, the Iranian embassy in Kuwait announced that it offers Iranian citizenship to stateless Bedoon of Iranian ancestry.
In recent years, the rate of suicide among Bedoon has risen sharply.
Demographic engineering