News / Persian Gulf

Comoros ready to receive Kuwaiti stateless: Minister

Monday, 16 May 2016 9:30 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 16 May 2016 10:23 AM ]

Bedoon men attend a seminar hosted by the Kuwait Human Rights Association to talk about the suffering of tens of thousands of stateless Arabs. © AFP

The Comoros says it is ready to consider taking thousands of stateless people denied citizenship in Kuwait if the Persian Gulf state makes such a request.

“If the issue is raised officially, we are ready to discuss it,” the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Anba cited visiting Comorian Foreign Minister Abdulkarim Mohamed as saying on Monday.

When asked if the African island nation was ready to receive Kuwait's stateless, Mohamed said “Yes, it is something we are ready to do if officially requested by the Kuwaiti government.”

Some 110,000 stateless people, known as bidoons, live in Kuwait. The government says it can grant citizenship only to 34,000 of them.

After the end of British protectorate in Kuwait in 1961, officials granted citizenship only to those they called “founding fathers” and deprived a group of people of citizenship, who were called “bidoon jinsiya” or “without nationality.”

In November 2014, Kuwait said those bidoons not granted citizenship could be given permanent residence if they agreed to take Comorian “economic citizenship.”

Interior Ministry's Major General Mazen Al-Jarrah said those who accepted the offer would be given a series of incentives, including free education, health care and the right to work.

The Comoros, a tiny archipelago 185 miles off the Mozambique coast in the Indian Ocean, hosts a population of just under 800,000 people, nearly all of them Muslims.

The impoverished Comoros is a member of the Arab League as well as the African Union (AU).

The African island nation has already provided passports for thousands of bidoons in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in exchange for generous aid in a deal similar to Kuwait’s proposal.

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