Al-Fadalah … When will the ‘Bedoun’ crisis be solved?

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HUMAN beings form the basis of a nation, which is why constitutions and religions have always given great importance to them, and have crystallized the values that characterize their development or deal with the backwardness of any society.

This is because deviant ideas find fertile ground in ignorance, and they are against humanity because it is based on the quest to eliminate a certain group.

When the Constitution of Kuwait was drafted in 1962, it was based on the elevation of the value of the human being. Three years before it came the Nationality Law in which the foundations of the Kuwaiti identity were determined. There were individuals who were not granted nationality due to doubts about their origin. At that time, this was not a burden for the state because of their small number (about 5,000 or less), but over time, they became a huge burden.

The number of so-called “Bedoun” or “stateless people”, or according to the official government designation “illegal residents”, was more than 220,000 before the Iraqi invasion, as per several statistics. After the year 1992, a percentage of them left but a significant number of them remained.

According to the latest statistics of the Central Agency for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents, about 30,000 of them deserve citizenship, while more than 90,000 of them hold Iraqi, Saudi, Syrian, Iranian, and other nationalities.

We beg to ask – If the concerned authorities have all this information, why not contact the embassies of those countries, and coordinate with them to repatriate those people back to their countries? Or why not reveal the identities of each one of them, and let the aggrieved prove the damage done to him with evidence and documents? And why not conduct a DNA test on those under suspicion?

Head of the Central Agency for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents Saleh Al-Fadalah said, “There are those who deserve to carry the Kuwaiti ID.”

This is good talk, but the agency does not have a solution, as it is, first and foremost, a statistical and civil research body that has no authority. The government is responsible for settling the matter and implementing the law, instead of making this agency a front that everyone shoots at. It thus abandons its most important role, which is caring for the human being, ensuring his social and psychological stability, and facilitating his contribution to the renaissance of society.

In Kuwait, winter and summer are on a single roof. Citizenship is granted to children of unknown parents. This phenomenon has increased during the past few years, especially in areas where the state has abandoned monitoring and inspection, such as Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, Hassawi and Abbasiya areas, which represent a hotbed of crime. It also happened at a time when it is recognized that all holders of the 1965 census deserve citizenship, and according to some statistics, their number reaches 47,000.

Despite all that, the government is strict with generations of stateless residents, and is trying to force them to do the impossible, which is to prove that they are not from this land.

In fact, the country is still suffering to this day from the scandal of the buying of passports from some countries, which turned out to be fake. Unfortunately, this was done with the knowledge of the concerned agencies, and revealed the determination to push these people to commit a crime in order to get out of the predicament they are placed in.

Everyone in Kuwait today wants this issue to be resolved – both opponents and supporters. It has led to the formation of a contentious file between the government and a number of parliamentarians, and led to a new social division.

Therefore, the government must find a solution to this dilemma that it has placed the country in. It should either work on giving these people passports valid for a certain period, as well as some money to regularize their situation and search for countries to naturalize them. Or they should be returned to the countries where they are said to belong, and be given some money for that purpose. Those who deserve Kuwaiti citizenship should be naturalized, and the rest should either be granted permanent residence or deported to their countries. Also, the children of Kuwaiti women should be granted citizenship.

This file has been troubling Kuwait for 63 years, and the continuation of the situation as it is has no explanation except to keep the issue of political and electoral investment, fraud, and stirring up strife under the pretext of preserving national identity.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

This news has been read 21979 times!