Mass revocations have been cast as part of a reformist agenda spearheaded by Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.
DUBAI – Leaving her weekly workout class, Lama was shocked to discover she was no longer a Kuwaiti — one of tens of thousands of people, mostly women, suddenly stripped of citizenship.
After her credit card payment for the class in Kuwait City was declined, she learnt her bank account was temporarily frozen because her nationality, acquired through marriage, had been revoked. “It was a shock,” said the grandmother in her 50s, originally from Jordan, who like others interviewed by AFP asked to use a pseudonym, fearing a backlash from the authorities.
“To be a law-abiding citizen for more than 20 years and then wake up one day to find out you’re no longer a citizen… that’s not okay at all,” she said.
The mass revocations have been cast as part of a reformist agenda spearheaded by Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who dissolved parliament and suspended parts of the constitution five months after taking power in December 2023.
His latest citizenship policy appears aimed at restricting nationality to those with blood ties to the tiny, oil-rich nation, reshaping Kuwaiti identity and potentially trimming its electorate after years of political crisis, analysts told AFP. In a televised speech to the country of nearly five million — only a third of them Kuwaitis — the emir pledged in March to “deliver Kuwait to its original people clean and free from impurities”.
Lama is among more than 37,000 people including at least 26,000 women who have lost Kuwaiti nationality since August, according to an AFP tally of official figures. Media reports suggest the real number could be much higher. While large-scale citizenship revocations are not unheard of in Kuwait, “the volume is definitely unprecedented”, said Bader al-Saif, assistant professor of history at Kuwait University.
Kuwait already has a big stateless community: the Bidoon, estimated at around 100,000 people, who were denied citizenship on independence from British protectorship in 1961.
