KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait has begun easing tough restrictions on thousands of stateless Arabs who have been denied most of their basic rights in the oil-rich emirate, a lawmaker said Tuesday.
The interior ministry has started issuing special identification cards that allow stateless Arabs to work and obtain public services like education and health, the head of parliament's human rights committee, Ali al-Rashed, told reporters.
"We have been informed by the interior minister that cards have already been issued to 13,000 stateless persons, which will be renewed annually," Rashed said after a committee meeting attended by the minister.
"Card holders will be able to live normally and obtain a driver's licence, medical care and education," he said.
Kuwait launched a crackdown on stateless Arabs, known as bidoon, in 2000, depriving them of their essential rights in a bid to force them to reveal their true identity.
The bidoon, Arabic for without, are Arabs who have residency ties to the country, some going back generations, but who either lack or have failed to produce documentation of their nationality.
The government insists that a majority of bidoon, whose current number is estimated at more than 70,000, came from neighbouring countries after the discovery of oil in the 1930s.
Authorities said that during the past six years, some 20,000 bidoon produced their original citizenship and were given residence permits like other foreigners.
The Gulf emirate decided around five years ago not to grant citizenship to bidoon who came to Kuwait after 1965 and to consider only those who came before then.
The number of bidoon dwindled from about 250,000 before the Iraqi invasion in August 1990 to about 120,000 after Kuwait's liberation seven months later as most fled to Iraq. Thousands of those who remained have since acquired third-country citizenships.
Some were employed in the Kuwaiti army and police force but many others were not allowed to work, a situation for which Kuwait has repeatedly come under criticism by international human rights bodies.
Kuwait to post 24 billion-dollar budget surplus