IOM — Migration Governance Overview: The State of Kuwait (May 2018)

IOM's Migration Governance Indicators (MGI) assessment of Kuwait, funded by the Government of Sweden and implemented with the Economist Intelligence Unit. Its subject is Kuwait's general labour-migration governance — principally the Kafala sponsorship system governing Temporary Contractual Workers (TCWs) — not the Bidoon specifically, and it should not be read as Bidoon-specific evidence.

Two findings are nonetheless directly relevant to any Bidoon statelessness case. First, its treaty-ratification table (Section 1.1) records that Kuwait has NOT ratified: the ILO Migration for Employment Convention (Revised), 1949 (No. 97); the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951; the UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 1954; the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 1961; the ILO Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143); or the ICRMW, 1990. Kuwait has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1991).

Second, describing Kuwait's own 1959 Nationality Law from a general migration-governance standpoint (not a Bidoon-specific one), the report states: 'Kuwait does not offer permanent residence pathways to TCWs. While the 1959 Nationality Law stipulates that after 15 years of residence (and additional conditions) TCWs may obtain citizenship, many individuals born and raised in Kuwait have not obtained citizenship. Citizenship is granted on an ad hoc basis.'

USE IN A REPORT: cite the treaty table as independent, non-Home-Office confirmation that Kuwait sits outside the international refugee/statelessness treaty framework entirely — relevant to arguments that a Bidoon claimant has no international-law remedy available inside Kuwait itself. The 'ad hoc' naturalisation finding independently corroborates the same characterisation the Home Office CPINs give specifically for Bidoon naturalisation (see BRF-414451D6, BRF-E717C1EE) — worth noting that an entirely separate body, assessing an entirely separate population, reached the same conclusion about how the 1959 Law is actually administered.

Corroborating, not primary, authority — its subject is labour migrants (TCWs) under the Kafala system, a different population from the Bidoon, and it should not be cited as if it were. Its value here is narrow and specific: an independent, non-Home-Office source confirming Kuwait's non-accession to the 1951, 1954, and 1961 conventions, and independently describing the 1959 Nationality Law's naturalisation route as ad hoc rather than a matter of entitlement — the same characterisation Home Office country guidance gives for Bidoon naturalisation specifically.