[wanita-muslimah] Rights group praises Kuwait bedoon move

 

http://news.kuwaittimes.net/2013/03/26/rights-group-praises-kuwait-bedoon-move/

Rights group praises Kuwait bedoon move

KUWAIT: Activist group Human Rights Watch praised the Kuwaiti government for granting citizenship to 4,000 stateless Arabs but said more needs to be done to better protect the rights of more than 100,000 bedoons in the Gulf state. Forty-three MPs voted in favour of a bill last week to grant citizenship to 4,000 stateless people. In order to take effect, the law must now be signed by the Emir of Kuwait. "While this bill is a welcome step, the Kuwaiti government must intensify its efforts to find a lasting solution for all the bedoon in the country," Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director for Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "The bedoon's human rights must be upheld without discrimination, in particular their rights to health, education and work. "The absence of policies to resolve the plight of the bedoon, rooted in human rights standards, is a stain on the country's international reputation. It deprives thousands of bedoon families of their basic political, economic and social rights and bars them from contributing fully to Kuwaiti society," he added.

Kuwait, home to an estimated 180,000 bedoon, set up a committee in November 2010 promising some rights to bedoon, such as identification papers and access to public education. However, local reports said only 16,000 citizenship applications had been approved in the last 20 years. Sheikh Ahmad Al Humoud Al Sabah, the interior minister, said last year it would start to naturalise some of its bedoon following repeated protests, which were broken up by water cannon and tear gas during the Arab Spring. Saleh Al Fadhalah, who heads the government's central agency for illegal residents, said as many as 34,000 stateless people could qualify for citizenship. Kuwait has long claimed the bidoon have destroyed their original passports to claim Kuwaiti citizenship, which would allow them to claim the Gulf state's generous welfare benefits. In a bid to force the bedoon, often descendants of desert nomads, to produce original nationality papers, Kuwait has refused to issue essential documents to most of them, including birth, marriage and death certificates.

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