MENA Rights Group — submission to Kuwait's third Universal Periodic Review: public liberties, the Nationality Act and the Bidoon (July 2019)

TREATIES AND MECHANISMS. Kuwait had not ratified OPCAT, the ICCPR's two Optional Protocols, the Enforced Disappearance Convention, the Rome Statute, the Migrant Workers Convention or ILO Convention 189, nor accepted CAT inquiries or individual complaints. Despite a standing invitation (13 September 2010), requests from the Special Rapporteurs on minority issues (2013), freedom of expression (2014) and human rights defenders (2015) had gone unanswered. Law No. 67 of 2015 on the National Office for Human Rights provides for eleven members nominated by the Council of Ministers and appointed by Amiri decree, which MRG says is not independent under the Paris Principles; in 2019 the office was not operating.

EXPRESSION, ASSEMBLY, ASSOCIATION. Constitution Arts. 36–37 and 43–44. The Press and Publications Law requires licences (KD 250,000 capital for a daily) and prohibits broad categories of content; Al-Watan's licences were revoked (upheld 2015). Cybercrime Law No. 63 of 2015 penalises criticism of the Amir online; the Communication Law No. 37 of 2014 lets the regulator block content without judicial oversight. Decree-Law No. 65 of 1979 punishes unlicensed gatherings with up to six years; in November 2017 the Court of Appeal sentenced 67 people over the 2011 entry into the National Assembly, and in July 2018 the Court of Cassation upheld 16 convictions. Law No. 24 of 1962 regulates associations.

NATIONALITY (3.2). Kuwait is not party to the 1954 or 1961 conventions and has reservations to CRC Art. 7, CRPD Art. 18 and CEDAW Art. 9. The Nationality Act rests on paternal descent; a Kuwaiti mother transmits nationality only on divorce or the father's death, and not automatically. Article 13 allows withdrawal of a naturalised person's nationality on grounds that include fraud, honour or honesty offences, and dissemination of opinions that "may tend seriously to undermine the economic or social structure of the State", with no appeal. Citing The Economist (26 November 2016), MRG states that at least 120 people, including a newspaper publisher, were deprived of nationality between 2014 and 2016.

DETENTION, TORTURE, DEATH PENALTY. Pre-trial detention beyond six months; administrative deportation for minor offences; the arrest of more than 100,000 "illegal residents" reported in a January 2015 campaign; torture defined inadequately and punishable by at most five years; the extradition of Egyptian nationals despite torture risk (2015, 2019); seven executions in January 2017 after a pause.

JUDICIARY. Executive control of appointments; non-Kuwaiti judges, more than half of the bench, on short renewable contracts.

BIDOON (5). UNHCR counted 92,000 stateless people in Kuwait in 2018 (civil society estimates up to 130,000); the three categories of Bidoon described by CERD; the 1986 withdrawal of civil status; exclusion from state education; limited "Article 17 passports"; the harassment of activists including Abdulhakim Al-Fadhli; CERD's 2017 recommendations, including reasoned, appealable decisions on nationality applications.

USE IN A REPORT: a well-referenced 2019 NGO baseline, useful for showing that the practices criticised after 2024 had earlier roots. Cite current law from the amended texts, not from this submission.

The submission describes the Nationality Act and Article 13 as they stood in 2019. Both have since been amended (Decree-Laws 116/2024, 158/2024, 52/2026 and 79/2026, recorded in the Dossier's nationality entry), and the grounds and terms it quotes should not be cited as current law. Two of its concerns are still live in later UN findings on the Dossier: the Committee against Torture in 2024 again found the Human Rights Diwan not independent of the Council of Ministers and the definition and penalty for torture inadequate. The figure of 120 people deprived of nationality in 2014–2016 comes from a press report, not from an official source.