Between Borders and Birthright: The Bidoon and Statelessness in the Arab Gulf

This paper examines the statelessness of the Bidoon ("without nationality") in the Arab Gulf states, with particular focus on Kuwait. It argues that Bidoon statelessness was not an administrative accident but a deliberate legal construction rooted in the 1959 Nationality Law. Drawing on international human rights law, comparative politics, and the political economy of exclusion, the paper traces how legislative design, administrative entrenchment, and economic interest combined to produce a multigenerational stateless population. It concludes with a sequenced framework of legal and institutional remedies grounded in comparative state practice.