07/06/2007

The majority of today’s bidun are descendants of these Bedouin tribes, but either because their ancestors failed to understand the importance of citizenship or because they were nomads living in the desert outside the city walls, they could not furnish adequate proof that they were settled in the country and were consequently classified as stateless. Even today, statelessness in Kuwait is a matter of being outside. The majority of bidun live in virtual exile, in squalid housing projects in Sulaibiya and Jahra, in Ahmadi and the rundown neighborhood of Jilīb ash-Shiyukh.