At least 50,000 people, and as many as 200,000, have lost their Kuwaiti citizenship in just 16 months during an ongoing crackdown that is beginning to affect prominent members of society.
The denaturalisations in the Gulf state began in September 2024 after the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who came to power in 2023, suspended parliament and key articles of the constitution related to citizenship.
The new legislation was aimed at “cleaning up” fraud within the nationality register, and the Emir promised in a speech in March to “deliver Kuwait to its original people clean and free from impurities”.
But the campaign soon expanded to cover foreign wives and individuals who had been granted citizenship for “exceptional services” to the country, The New Arab reported.
Last month Kuwait revoked the citizenship of its ambassador to the United Kingdom, and on January 25 it issued four decrees denaturalising 65 people and anyone who had acquired citizenship as their dependents, including the country’s first Arab doctor, an army brigadier, and a prominent literary figure.
The government stopped regularly announcing figures in September 2025, but another decree was issued on Sunday withdrawing citizenship from another nine individuals and their dependents.
Four national team soccer players, an actor, a singer, a CEO, two surgeons, Islamic preachers and clerics, a former MP and a media mogul have also had their citizenships revoked during the crackdown.
About two-thirds of those who have been denaturalised are widows and divorcees who renounced their previous citizenships to become Kuwaiti, leaving them stateless, the Middle East Eye reported.
Forced statelessness is illegal under international law, but the crackdown has been largely ignored and Kuwaiti courts do not currently allow reviews of citizenship decisions.
Andrew McIntosh, director of research and studies at rights group Salam, told MEE the citizenship purge was being used as a method of “defining a distinct Kuwaitness”, and was being used to maintain the country’s generous welfare provisions and public sector as it diversifies its economy away from fossil fuels.
Header image: Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (Kuwait Government).
The post Kuwait strips citizenship from up to 200,000 people in nationality crackdown first appeared on The Noticer.
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