Hassan Jaber, 37, was born and raised in Kuwait. But he is a minority in his home country – a Kuwaiti-Bidoon. Bidoon is short for Bidoon Jinsiyya, meaning ‘without nationality’ in Arabic.
“I’m from Kuwait, my dad’s from Kuwait, we’re not from any other country, but we are stateless in Kuwait with no rights,” Jaber told me.
Being stateless meant Jaber was unable to pursue further education and other facilities available to Kuwaiti citizens.
“Without any passport, without any medical care, without any driver’s licence…This is what we’re suffering,” Jaber said.
This is what brought Jaber to Australia in 2012.
“You don’t have freedom, and you can’t raise your voice,” he added.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 92 thousand Kuwaiti people who are considered stateless. But they are not alone. Shown below, stateless people are all over the world.
There are a total of 4.16 million confirmed stateless people. According to the UNHCR, stateless people are often not allowed to go to school, see a doctor, get a job, open a bank account, buy a house or even get married.
There are diverse reasons why people are stateless. Refugee Council Australia said it could be the result of discrimination against minority groups and the gaps or conflicts in nationality laws.
Statelessness is prevalent in South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. But 86 per cent of the world’s stateless population are concentrated in only 10 countries.
These 10 countries make up more than three million of the confirmed stateless population. The Ivory Coast is a significant outlier in Africa as the only country in the continent to have a strikingly high population of statelessness. It is known as a “country of immigration”, but due to nationality laws on “migrants and their descendants”, it has grown to be the country with the highest number of stateless people.
According to the UNHCR, The Ivory Coast and Thailand are the only governments stated out of the 10 countries who have made pledges to stop statelessness.
Kuwait, the home of Jaber has not made any pledges to end this. Other countries in the Middle East are the same, even with the numbers shown below.
Various reports from the Americans for Democracy & Human Rights reveal several accounts of Kuwaiti-Bidoons being imprisoned for protesting. Jaber was arrested and jailed for more than 40 days when he tried to protest for his rights in 2012.
The UNHCR said the “true global figure [of stateless people] is estimated to be significantly higher”. This is evident when comparing the confirmed and estimated stateless people in the world.
This shows how there can be even more stateless people across the world who are unconfirmed. The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has estimated the number of stateless people in the world is about 15 million.
The UNHCR said the improvement of data on stateless populations is another step in ending statelessness.
While Jaber has been living in Australia for eight years, he still experiences inequality after being a refugee. The Australian government does not allow him to apply for permanent residence. Similarly to being stateless in Kuwait, attempting to find work and accessing education has been a challenge for him. He has had to choose between receiving government assistance and studying under his Safe Haven Enterprise Visa.
“If you study full-time, they [the Australian government] are going to cut your payments…Just work for us that’s it,” he said.
Through Jaber’s experiences, he has founded the activist group Justice for Refugees to advocate for the diverse problems refugees experience, including stateless people.
“Trust me, no one likes to leave their country and go to another. We hoped that we were gonna have a better life and better dream…But, unfortunately, this happens.”
(Featured Image: Rohingya people, one of the largest stateless communities in the world, according to Human Rights Watch. They are at a shelter being provided with emergency food and drinking water. DFID Burma)
Correction: a paragraph was edited to clarify the situation in Ivory Coast. 3-Oct-2020
