Kuwait Mass Citizenship Revocation Campaign (2024-2025)

Between late 2024 and the end of 2025, the Kuwaiti government carried out a denationalization campaign on a scale unmatched since the postwar era. Verified counts grew from roughly 35,000 stripped citizens by December 2024, to ~42,000 by March 2025 (France 24), ~50,000 by August 2025 (The National), and upper-bound estimates reaching 200,000 by December 2025. Roughly 95% of revocations occurred within an 18-month window, despite government framing that spread the figures over three years. The enabling political event was the May 10, 2024 decree by Emir Mishal al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, who took power in December 2023 after the death of his predecessor Emir Nawaf. Mishal dissolved the National Assembly of Kuwait, suspended Articles 107 and 181 of the constitution, and gave himself the power to rule by decree for up to four years. On September 25, 2024 the Cabinet approved amendments to the 1959 Nationality Law (Law 15/1959), and in December 2024 Decree-Law 116/2024 was published in the Official Gazette and took immediate, retroactive effect. The decree rewrote Article 8 of the nationality law so that foreign wives of Kuwaiti men no longer automatically acquire citizenship through marriage, and expanded Article 13's revocation grounds to vague categories including offenses against "honor, trust, state security, religious sanctities, or the Amir." Procedural safeguards against statelessness were removed. Revocation decisions are made by a Supreme Committee to Investigate Kuwaiti Citizenship and confirmed by the Cabinet, with no judicial oversight and no right of appeal. The same decree retroactively applies to people who had been citizens for sixty years or more, and revocation automatically cascades to children and grandchildren.