KUWAIT CITY, Feb 16, (KUNA): Granting nationality is a state sovereign issue and external powers have no right to meddle in such internal affairs of a sovereign and independent country, affirmed the Chairman of the Central Apparatus for Illegal Residents Saleh Al-Fadhala.

International law grants states legislation right and freedom of setting terms and restrictions for granting the citizenship, in harmony with the state political, economic and social interests, said Al-Fadhala in a statement to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).

“Citizenship is subject to the state judgment, in line with the country’s higher interests, thus external parties cannot intervene in such purely internal issues,” Al-Fadhala re-stressed in his statement to the national news agency of Kuwait.

His statement came as a reaction to remarks made by a delegation of international organization during a recent visit to the country, calling to grant the Kuwaiti nationality to a segment of residents who are not legally eligible to hold the Kuwaiti identification card.

Kuwait’s hosting of delegations of such organizations is part of the state policy of transparency regarding the issue of the illegal residents.

The Apparatus, he elaborated, is ready to discuss humanitarian aspect of this issue with these foreign agencies, indicating that they should not meddle in the other dimensions of this question that fall within jurisdictions of the State of Kuwait.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice announced on Saturday issuing 1,023 legitimate documents of marriage, divorce and marriage counseling contracts of illegal residents in the country for the year 2012.
Issued

The Department of Legal Authentication and its subsidiaries have issued 921 marriage documents, 93 divorce documents and nine marriage counseling ones for illegal residents during the period between January and December of 2012, Assistant Undersecretary for Legal Affairs and Legislation Documentation of the Ministry of Justice, Bader Al-Zamanan, told KUNA.

Al-Zamanan said “During the same year, the department also issued 306 marriage contracts, 37 divorce documents and a single marriage counseling one for Kuwaitis and their wives who are illegally residing in Kuwait.

“It also issued 134 marriage and 19 divorce documents for illegal male residents and their Kuwaiti wives.” He noted that the total number of documents issued by the department in 2012 amounted to 15,416 while the number of inheritance documents reached 315.

Al-Zamanan said the Council of Ministers Resolution No. 409 of the year 2011 for the submission of a number of privileges and facilities for illegal residents encouraged those people to implement such provisions at the department.

With regard to the Department of Real Estate Registration and Authentication at the ministry, Al-Zamanan said that the total number of authentication and ratification documents issued for the illegal residents during the past year amounted to 13,488, including 183 admission documents, 3603 authorization and 1,427 power of attorney.

This department has also issued 17 documents for illegal residents owning real estate in Kuwait, which included ten documents that will be forwarded as a grant from the country to the families of martyrs and four of them will be owned by relatives of Kuwaitis.

In addition, he praised the role of the central agency for addressing the situations of illegal residents and its cooperation with the Ministry of Justice in order to facilitate all documentation issuance assigned to the latter from the agency.

The right of accessing those documents is guaranteed to everyone, and the ministry does not prevent anyone from obtaining them, Al-Zamanan concluded.