For Bidoon and stateless Gulf citizens, having no nationality means having no rights at all
Originally published on Global Voices
This article by Nazeeha Saaed was first published on Muwatin on October 2, 2025. This edited version is published on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
This post is also part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
The denial or revocation of nationality in the Gulf states is a political practice shaped by each state’s internal dynamics and governance style. It reflects the failure to uphold human rights, chief among them, the equal right of every individual to acquire a nationality and never be arbitrarily deprived of it.
In 2025, Kuwait passed amendments to its Nationality Law, making it easier to revoke Kuwaiti nationality. In parallel, the country launched a broad campaign to review nationality acquisition. Through the Supreme Committee for Verifying Kuwaiti Nationality, more than 42,000 people have reportedly had their citizenship revoked since 2024 — an unprecedented escalation.
The campaign has targeted naturalized citizens, dual nationals, and those accused of acquiring nationality fraudulently. Many affected are women who acquired Kuwaiti nationality through marriage under Article 8 of the law, which has now been repealed. These revocations were carried out without judicial oversight or avenues for appeal, raising serious legal and human rights concerns.
Many of those stripped of their nationality are now stateless, deprived of access to essential services like healthcare, education, and employment. Their identity documents and passports are confiscated, effectively curtailing their freedom of movement and participation in public life.
Kuwait’s Bidoon population has faced statelessness since the country’s founding, leading to profound economic and social marginalization, with many struggling to access education, healthcare, and employment because of their lack of an official identity.
Khadija, a Bidoon woman from Kuwait born into a family of 10, realized early on that her family lacked the privileges others enjoyed. When she was in primary school, she and her sister were forced to stay home because the family could not afford tuition fees, despite public education being free for Kuwaiti citizens.
“We stayed home and studied using last year’s textbooks until the time came when my sister and I had to help our struggling family,” Khadija recalls. “We worked to save money for bunk beds like our brothers had, and for school fees the following year. I longed to run, play, and draw like other girls. But our little project irritated a municipal employee, or so he claimed. He threatened us — and that ended our business.”
A tool for political punishment
Kuwait is not alone in using nationality revocation to punish political opponents or deny rights to specific groups. Bahrain has taken a similar approach. Between 2012 and 2020, over 1,000 people were stripped of their nationality. The peak came in 2018 and 2019, when about 300 people were subjected to mass trials on terrorism charges, resulting in the revocation of their citizenship. In one case, in May 2018, 115 people were denaturalized. “Bahrain uses nationality revocation as a weapon against political dissidents,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Niku Jafarnia in an interview with Muwatin.
In April 2019, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa issued a royal pardon restoring the nationality of 551 of those whose nationality had been stripped, following widespread pressure from human rights organisations and United Nations bodies. However, Jawad Fairooz, director of SALAM for Democracy and Human Rights, notes: “It was only a partial step. The decision did not include all those who had lost their Bahraini nationality. Statistics indicate around 435 cases remain unresolved, primarily due to political and security considerations aimed at limiting the influence of the opposition.”
In 2024, Bahrain also announced the formation of a committee to review all cases of nationality acquisition dating back to 2010, to verify the accuracy of the documents and information used to obtain Bahraini nationality. The move followed investigations by the Nationality, Passports and Residence Affairs Department, which found that some individuals had obtained citizenship unlawfully or with forged documents.
“Stripping someone of their nationality renders them stateless, which is a violation of international law,” Jafarnia adds. “The Bahraini government must adopt a clear and transparent legal process in reviewing nationality claims, and ensure it does not violate human rights.”
Bahrain has a history of refusing to grant citizenship to certain groups. Thousands of Bahrainis of Iranian origin remained stateless until 2000, when they were naturalized during the early reform period of King Hamad’s reign. “Since independence, Bahraini authorities have managed the nationality file through a security-political and demographic lens — not a legal or human rights one. Denying nationality to families of Iranian origin, even those who had lived in Bahrain for over a century, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, was part of a broader strategy to preserve demographic balance, often tied to sectarian concerns or perceived external threats,” Fairooz explains.
Nidal Al Salman, director of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, describes statelessness in Bahrain as a complex human rights crisis rooted in the region’s early state-building. She explains that some families were excluded from official records because of a lack of awareness, geographic isolation, or periods of political and social upheaval.
She added: “Discriminatory policies that denied citizenship to people of Iraqi or Iranian descent have reinforced social divisions and excluded them from full citizenship, even though many of these families migrated for trade, settled in cities like Manama and Muharraq long before the modern state was established, and contributed significantly to Bahrain’s economy through agriculture, crafts, and commerce.”
The Bahraini opposition also accuses the government of naturalising tens of thousands of foreigners for recruitment into the military and police, and of manipulating electoral outcomes by altering the sectarian balance.
Women: Second-class citizens
No Gulf country grants women equal rights to confer nationality to their children, except in rare, complicated cases, and even then, only with state approval. The process is never automatic. This legal discrimination forces many Gulf women to factor in nationality considerations when making personal life decisions: whom they can marry, where they can live, and how secure their children’s future will be.
These constraints often lead women to marry citizens for legal convenience, or live in a state of anxiety about the legal status of their children, especially if the father is unable to pass on his nationality to them.
One of the gravest consequences of this discrimination is statelessness. Children born to national mothers and foreign fathers may be left without any recognized nationality, particularly if the father is stateless, undocumented, or unable to pass on his nationality.
Thomas McGee, co-coordinator of the MENA Statelessness Network (Hawiati), explains: “Under international law, every state has the right to set its own nationality laws. But the law also prohibits discrimination based on gender or any form of identity. Gulf nationality laws that prevent women from passing on their nationality to their children constitute a clear violation of international law.”
Consequences of deprivation
Ahmed, 27, shared his story. His Bahraini mother married his Pakistani father 34 years ago, and they had four children. Despite being born and raised in Bahrain, Ahmed has never been granted Bahraini nationality. “I only realized we weren’t citizens when my father faced problems at work, and there was talk that he might be forced to leave the country,” he said.
Ahmed is now an engineer. He spoke of the challenges he has faced as the son of a Bahraini woman without Bahraini nationality:
“I was an excellent student, but I couldn’t get a university scholarship because I wasn’t a citizen. I had to work hard to support my family because my father’s income was low. One of the most exclusionary experiences I faced was signing a job contract — only to have it cancelled later when the company began laying off staff. Suddenly, I had no valid residence permit and just one month to leave the country. Bahrain was the only home I had ever known. I had lived there for 22 years and had never left. And now I was told I had one month to leave everything behind, unless I found a job or returned to school.”
Khadija shares a similar experience, “Every step that seems normal for others becomes a challenge for us as stateless people. We always find ourselves asking: ‘But I’m Bidoon, am I even allowed to do this?’—whether it’s about studying, working, freelancing, marrying, having children, or anything else.”
Toward a solution
Many stateless people in the Gulf live in extremely difficult conditions: excluded from education, employment, public healthcare and freedom of movement, while also suffering political and social discrimination.
Fairooz explains that the solution lies in “comprehensive legal and social reforms, and activating the legal frameworks to grant nationality and full citizenship rights. Given the realities of globalization and socio-political change, Bahrain must adopt a more inclusive and just approach to this segment of society to build a more cohesive and stable country.”
Thomas McGee agrees: “Solutions depend on the context, but generally, every child born in a country should have the right to acquire its nationality if they would otherwise be stateless. This is better for individuals, for society, and for the state.”
Ahmed hopes for an end to gender discrimination in nationality laws: “Children of Bahraini mothers should be treated equally to those of Bahraini fathers. At the very least, they should be allowed to reside and visit on a legal permit. Many families have been left vulnerable and, sadly, many have been torn apart.”
For Khadija, there is one simple wish: “That my identity — and my legally unrecognized existence — wouldn’t be the daily challenge that defines every aspect of my life.”