ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds of Iraqi women are stranded as stateless individuals in Kuwait, an Iraqi human rights official warned on Tuesday, after the Kuwaiti government revoked their citizenship following a widespread citizenship review in the country.
"If we look at the overall numbers, citizenship has been revoked from hundreds of Iraqi women in Kuwait, but there are more than 100 women originally from Basra province alone," Mahdi al-Tamimi, director of the Basra office of the High Commission for Human Rights in Iraq, told Rudaw’s Malik Mohammed.
Tamimi confirmed to Rudaw English that “over 2000 Iraqi women have had their citizenship withdrawn in Kuwait since the start of the withdrawals.”
He added that these women had contacted the organization due to the fact that they couldn’t obtain their Iraqi citizenship back despite contacting and visiting the Iraqi embassy in Kuwait, noting that these women “can’t even access hospitals in Kuwait.”
Kuwait has revoked the citizenship of 415 people, according to six decrees published Sunday in its official gazette, Kuwait al-Youm. The gazette did not publish the names of those affected, but noted that the measures also apply to dependents who acquired citizenship through them.
Since 2024, Kuwaiti authorities launched a widespread campaign to review citizenship files, revoking the nationality of thousands of individuals on grounds of fraud, document tampering, or holding dual citizenship.
Partners are required to renounce their original citizenship to obtain Kuwaiti nationality, meaning these women had already canceled their Iraqi identification documents before their Kuwaiti status was stripped.
Tamimi noted that the affected women have lived in Kuwait for 15 to 20 years and were previously married to Kuwaiti citizens before the recent campaign swept them up.
Under Kuwaiti law, a foreign woman who acquires citizenship through marriage loses it upon divorce if she has no children. Women with children from a Kuwaiti husband retain their citizenship following a divorce, provided they do not remarry a non-Kuwaiti national.
"Now the Kuwaiti government has revoked their citizenship, and Iraq has not yet reinstated their official documents," Tamimi said.
"They currently live as stateless individuals with no rights, stranded like prisoners in Kuwait," the director emphasized, noting that "their bank accounts and cards have been blocked, and their money and assets have been seized.”
"Without official documents, they cannot even visit a doctor or a hospital, because the entire healthcare system in Kuwait is linked to a smart card," he said.
According to Tamimi, some of these women are divorced from their husbands and bear the sole responsibility of raising their children, who still hold Kuwaiti citizenship. However, due to this situation, "the fate of both the mothers and their children remains unknown."
Tamimi urged Iraqi authorities to question Kuwait on the legal grounds and justifications for revoking the citizenship of these women who have established families and lived there for many years, demanding that the interior ministry urgently dispatch an electronic biometric fingerprinting team to the Iraqi embassy in Kuwait to issue new Iraqi documents so the women can secure residency cards and basic living necessities.
The continued large-scale withdrawal and revocation of Kuwaiti nationality was initiated in March 2025, according to the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR).
“To date, over 70,000 individuals have already been affected by the new measures, including non-Kuwaiti women who have been naturalised through marriage,” Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, told the OHCHR in June.
The acquisition of Kuwaiti citizenship by foreign women through marriage was governed by Article 8 of Amiri Decree No. 15 of 1959.
However, under major amendments introduced in December 2024, the Kuwaiti government abolished this pathway entirely, meaning marriage to a Kuwaiti national no longer grants citizenship to foreign spouses, as the state continues its widespread nationality review campaign.
