08/06/2007

“There are people who don't eat,” Faisal* explains. Not all bidun in Kuwait face the same degree of hardship, but almost all confront the same indignities. Faisal’s family shares a house with two others, who are his close relatives. There are as many as six people sharing one room. “I earn about KD 190 (US$ 692) a month and pay KD 150 (US$ 547) in rent.” He has not had a raise in 16 years. Families share household expenses, but no member of any of the families holds a job at present.

Faisal’s wife suffers from heart disease and his four children from diabetes. Kuwait’s national healthcare system provides medical services free of charge to its citizens. Those without nationality must pay from their own pockets. Although he had been a soldier for 30 years, he did not receive a pension when he had to leave his job after the liberation of the country in 1991. Faisal, who is employed as a teacher, will never be able to own the house his family occupies, because the right to own property is one of the many denied the bidun.

Faisal explains that the government insists the bidun are not stateless, but rather are immigrants from other countries, who destroyed their passports in an attempt to secure the services and privileges that Kuwaiti citizens enjoy, and that until 1985, the bidun enjoyed as well. Many bidun succumbed to the pressure and purchased forged foreign passports, which would have allowed them to remain in the country with residence permits. “It costs about KD 16,000 (US$ 58,304) for four counterfeit passports,” Faisal explains. “My brother and his wife traveled to [Europe], and then [across the Atlantic] on counterfeit passports. Later, when the whole family was discovered to have false passports and asked for international protection, they were found on humanitarian grounds to be refugees and ultimately got citizen status. Their situation was solved.”

Unlike for the majority of young couples today, obtaining a marriage certificate was not a problem for Faisal because, as he jokes, he was married “a century ago.” Even so, he has had his share of difficulty in obtaining official documents. “I haven't had a driver's license in six years, and the only way to travel outside the country is to go on Hajj (the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca). I couldn't get a death certificate for my mother.”

"I am a teacher, but my teenage son has no interest in his studies. He asks me, ‘If I finish my exams, what will I do afterward? Sleep? What good is going to school if I can't work?’ My son is depressed. He knows that without a degree, he can make the same salary as his college-educated father.”

“We have rights, but there is no one who defends us. If we didn’t have rights, we wouldn’t stay here. There are people who came to this country after we did and got citizenship. We don’t ask much. We ask for human rights, for work, marriage, and housing.” Then he added, “There are charities that offer assistance to bidun, but not all bidun can take it. A man would have to grow a beard and to look like a fundamentalist just to get help. Non-Muslim countries help bidun more than Muslim countries.”

Faisal concluded, “If there is interest on the part of the world community, there is a solution.”

*Interviewee name has been changed.

Senior Advocate Maureen Lynch and Patrick Barbieri just returned from a two-week assessment of the situation of bidun in Kuwait.