Kuwait is advancing its citizenship crackdown under new rules introduced Sunday that bar naturalized citizens from voting and replace paper nationality certificates with electronic ones. Naturalized citizens could previously vote once they had held citizenship for 30 years, though they could not run for office or be appointed to parliament.
For now, that last policy isn’t so relevant: Kuwait’s emir dissolved the legislature — once viewed as one of the most powerful elected bodies in the Gulf — in May 2024 before embarking on a regulatory overhaul that has stripped at least 50,000 people of citizenship. Authorities say some of them held dual nationality, which is illegal for Kuwaitis, while others had obtained citizenship through fraud; rights groups say the government’s political opponents have also been targeted.