Human Rights Watch — World Report 2018: Kuwait (events of 2017)

Death penalty: 'In January, it carried out seven executions by hanging, the first executions since 2013. Human Rights Watch has documented due process violations in Kuwait's criminal justice system that have made it difficult for defendants to get a fair trial, including in capital cases.' The death penalty is retained for non-violent offences, including drug-related charges.

Privacy and counter-terrorism: 'In October, Kuwait's Constitutional Court found that an overbroad 2015 law that had required all Kuwaiti citizens and residents to provide DNA samples to authorities violated the right to privacy.'

Sexual orientation and gender identity: same-sex relations between men are punishable by up to seven years; 'In 2017, Kuwait reportedly deported 76 men on suspicion of being gay'; transgender people can be arrested under the 2007 provision prohibiting 'imitating the opposite sex in any way'.

Migrant and domestic workers: the domestic workers law does not set out sanctions against employers who confiscate passports or fail to provide adequate housing, food, medical expenses, breaks or rest days. In April 2017 a video showed an Ethiopian domestic worker falling from the seventh floor of an apartment building; the employer was reportedly charged with failing to assist her.

Bidun: 'Kuwait has a population of about 100,000 stateless persons, known as Bidun.' In September 2017 a Bidun man reportedly set himself on fire in protest at the status and conditions of the Bidun. Article 12 of the 1979 Public Gatherings Law continues to bar non-Kuwaitis from public gatherings.

Speech: prosecutions under the penal code, Printing and Publication Law, Public Gatherings Law and National Unity Law continued, as did deportation orders against some Bidun defendants that officials said would not be implemented. The report also covers women's rights (guardianship, polygamy without the other wife's knowledge, a husband's power to prohibit his wife from working; no domestic-violence law; article 153 of the penal code) and Kuwait's participation in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

USE IN A REPORT: a dated, second-year corroboration of the conditions described in the 2017 chapter, and the primary annual source for the end of the de facto moratorium on executions (January 2017) and the 2017 deportations of men suspected of being gay.

For representatives in capital-offence, LGBT and fair-trial claims: the January 2017 executions mark the end of a four-year pause, and the 2017 deportations are among the few documented instances of state action against men on the basis of perceived sexuality — both points to corroborate with the US State Department's human rights report for 2017. For a balanced assessment, the same chapter records the Constitutional Court's willingness to strike down the DNA law on privacy grounds, which speaks to the existence, though not the reach, of judicial checks.