THE TIMES KUWAIT REPORT
Kuwait is among a handful of countries around the world where the migrant population far outnumber citizens. As such, migration, and migrant problems have been issues of concern to policymakers, parliamentarians and the public in Kuwait, as well as to local, regional and international human rights organizations.
Policymakers tend to slot migrants and their problems into neat cubby holes such as, labor issues faced by legal migrant workers; abuses and human rights violations against migrant domestic helpers; potential implications of having to harbor asylum seekers, and the ongoing predicament of finding a lasting and widely acceptable solution to the tens of thousands of so-called ‘stateless’ people in Kuwait. And lastly, the large number of illegal migrants who are considered an economic and security vulnerability to the country.
While there are stringent labor laws to tackle labor problems related to legal migrant workers, domestic workers do not come under the purview of these laws. And, despite the access to new domestic worker laws and various plans and policies by the government to provide protection to such workers, abuse of household workers continues unabated. While the government has tended to ignore or pass on the onus of tackling the issue of asylum seekers to others, the issue of stateless bedouns remains a thorn in the sides of authorities that cannot be ignored or forgotten.
Similarly, though the authorities have repeatedly conducted raids, and checkpoints and introduced periods of amnesty for illegal migrants to leave the country without paying any punitive fines, the number of illegal migrants in the country still runs into tens of thousands and continues to increase as years go by. Here we look at each of these migrant related issues in more depth.
Kuwait’s uneasy relations with its large expatriate population is nothing new. The country has been a magnet for migrants even before the country’s independence, as merchants and entrepreneurs sought Kuwait’s strategic location and its bustling port to do business with the Arabian hinterland. However, it was the finding and export of oil beginning in the late 1940s, and the modernization spree that followed the country’s independence in 1961 that led to mass immigration of people to Kuwait from the surrounding Arab region and South Asia, as well as from Africa, Europe and further afield.
People seeking work opportunities in mega infrastructure and construction projects taking place around the country, as well as businesses lured by the desire to participate and share in the new-found wealth generated from the flow of oil, flooded to Kuwait. The country’s population, which was less than half a million at the time of independence, climbed to nearly a million by the end of the first decade of independence and crossed two million by 1988,
Except for a short sharp drop in the population to 1.6 million in the mid-1990s — in the aftermath of the 1990-91 invasion and occupation of the country by Iraqi forces — Kuwait’s population has witnessed a steady increase over the years. It crossed the two million mark again at the turn of the century and then went on to add another million by the end of 2010. Another million people were added to the population in the space of a further six years. Much of this population increase was from an increase in the number of migrants arriving each year.
Latest statistics on population and employment published by the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) reveals that as of the end of 2022 the total population of Kuwait grew by 8 percent from a year earlier to reach 4.74 million people. Although the increase of Kuwaiti population by 1.9 percent to reach 1.51 million contributed to the country’s population growth, the hike in population witnessed in 2022 came about largely from the 11 percent growth in non-Kuwaiti population, with the total expatriate numbers climbing to 3.22 million.
The demographic disparity arising from two-thirds of the population of Kuwait being foreigners has been blamed for many of the economic setbacks and social ills witnessed in the country. Lawmakers, for their part, have never missed an opportunity to criticize government policies for the population imbalance in the country, and to pressure the authorities to amend the skewed demographics.
Kuwait’s legal framework for migration dates back to the 1959 Aliens Residence Law, which continues to govern the residence and employment of migrants. This law forms the basis for the Temporary Contractual Workers (TCWs) system, which is based on a policy of having every migrant worker in the country under the ‘kafala’ or sponsorship of a citizen. Kuwait’s visa regulations are also organized on the TCWs system, with the country issuing eight types of residence permits or visas to TCWs through Residency Articles17 to 24 that clarify the resident status of migrants.
International Organization for Migration (IOM) is the main UN agency helping address migration-related issues in Kuwait. Since its establishment the IOM office in Kuwait has worked in close partnership with Kuwait to strengthen the capacity of relevant ministries and others responsible for protection of victims and the prosecution of human traffickers. The IOM has also organized several awareness raising campaigns on the topic of human trafficking and the rights of domestic workers.
On the issue of domestic workers in Kuwait a report published in the third quarter of 2022 by the Central Statistical Bureau, showed that by the end of the first-half of last year nearly a quarter of the total migrant workers in Kuwait were domestic workers. Around 655,000 expatriates, mainly from South Asia, were employed as domestic workers in Kuwait, of whom 339,000 were women workers and nearly half of them (161,000) were Filipina domestic workers.
Despite the Philippines being one of the main countries that sends domestic workers to Kuwait, and the Gulf nation remaining among the top source for migrant remittances to the Philippines, the working conditions of Filipina household workers, as well as women from other countries, have been an irritant in relations between Kuwait and other labor-source countries, in particular the Philippines.
The latest flare up in diplomatic ties with the Philippines followed the gruesome murder of yet another Filipina domestic worker in Kuwait early this year. In late January, the charred remains of Jullebee Ranara, 35, were discovered out in the desert. Investigations by security personnel led to the arrest of her employer’s 17-year-old son who was then charged of murder.
For his part, Kuwait’s ambassador in the Philippines Musaed Saleh Al-Thwaikh expressed profound regret and said that the Kuwaiti society was also shocked and saddened by the incident. He assured that justice would be done to Mrs. Ranara, and that such an incident was an isolated case. However, repeated occurrences of such horrendous acts in the past prove that the incident was anything but isolated.
On the asylum seekers front, since Kuwait is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugees Convention, the country does not have an asylum system. With the state lacking the legal frameworks and institutions to deal with asylum seekers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s refugee agency, is the only institution that deals with asylum-seeking migrants and refugees. According to the UNHCR, in 2019, there were between 692 and 1,700 refugees in Kuwait, and 1,073 asylum seekers, mainly from Iraq, Somalia, and Iran.
Also, as the country has not signed on to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and the subsequent 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, ‘stateless’ people remains a socially embroiling issue in Kuwait. The country is home to the seventh largest stateless population in the world, but ranks fourth in the world in terms of the proportion of stateless people in the total population.
Except for several thousand bedouns or ‘stateless persons’ as they are often referred to, who were naturalized over the years, Kuwaiti citizenship is reserved mainly for those born to a Kuwaiti father. Naturalization of ‘stateless bedouns’ who claim the right to Kuwaiti citizenship is a sensitive social issue and has been a major source of discord in parliament between opposition lawmakers and government’s over the years.
Social scientists and population experts point out that irregular migration policies over the years have contributed to the current skewed demographic profile in Kuwait, and the region in general. According to available data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2020, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, had a total population of 58 million of whom around 30 million (or 52%) were non‐nationals, or migrants.
Assuming that between 20–40 percent of the migrants residing in the various Gulf states were irregular, this would amount to between 6 to 12 million migrants being illegal residents in the GCC. The true magnitude of this population cohort remains unknown, as available data on their numbers are often at best estimations, since their illegal status means most of them are not recorded on the databases of states in the region.
Studies by the ILO and others have shown that four major social and economic structural features of GCC states lead to generating and sustaining illegal migrants.
These include the need for a sponsor (or kafeel) in order for a migrant to reside and work legally; the sale of visas, or visa trading by citizens and middle-men and their purchase by potential migrants; the difficulty of transferring from one employer to another; and finally, the role that intermediaries play in enabling and sustaining irregular migration.
In mid-February,Kuwait’s Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations, Tareq Al-Bannai, told a UN economic and social committee session that the country’s social development is based on transparent constitutional rules and guidelines which offer adequate support to its youth, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities. He added that the state provides free social insurance, social welfare and healthcare to its nationals in the event of old age, sickness, or the inability to work. Sadly this caring and benevolence is limited to citizens and does not extend to the majority migrant community in the country.
