Women, Peace and Security in Kuwait: Rethinking Inclusion Beyond Citizenship

The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, introduced through UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), calls for the participation, protection, and leadership of women in peacebuilding and governance. While originally conceived in the context of armed conflict, its principles of inclusion and human security extend far beyond warzones. Kuwait offers a compelling example of how peace and security can be questioned in the absence of formal conflict.

Despite its character as a stable Gulf monarchy and regional humanitarian actor, Kuwait is marked by deep social hierarchies grounded in an exclusionary model of citizenship. The country’s population is divided among citizens, stateless people (bidūn), and a vast expatriate majority governed by the kafāla mandatory sponsorship system. These stratifications regulate access to rights, resources, and representation, defining who is entitled to protection, whose voice is heard, and who remains at the margins.

In recent years, Kuwait has taken steps to engage with the WPS agenda, establishing a National Committee to implement UNSCR 1325 and initiating cooperation with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) to develop its first National Action Plan (NAP). Yet the scope of these initiatives remains uncertain: will they address the structural exclusions embedded in Kuwait’s citizenship system, or remain confined to state-centered approaches to gender empowerment?

The Kuwaiti case invites a broader reflection on the meaning of peace and security. Integrating WPS in Kuwait requires confronting the everyday insecurities produced by legal and social exclusion, recognizing that stability without equality is not peace, and that inclusion, not nationality, should be the foundation of security.

The Institutional and Political Landscape

Kuwait’s engagement with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is relatively recent but symbolically important. In 2024, the government established a National Committee for Implementing Security Council Resolution 1325, signaling its intent to translate global commitments into national policy (UN Women Arab States 2021). Working in collaboration with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, the committee has since launched workshops and technical consultations with representatives from key ministries, civil society organizations, and academic institutions (ESCWA 2024). These efforts aim to lay the groundwork for the country’s first National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS, a process still in progress as of 2025.

Institutionally, this marks a noteworthy shift. Historically, gender issues in Kuwait have been addressed through welfare and education policies rather than through a security framework. The WPS agenda introduces a different language, one that links gender equality to national stability, social resilience, and international credibility. For a country that defines much of its identity through humanitarian diplomacy and regional mediation, particularly during crises such as Yemen and the Gulf blockade, the adoption of WPS principles could enhance Kuwait’s profile as a peace-oriented actor (ESCWA 2024, Leichtman 2021).

However, the implementation of WPS domestically remains constrained by limited institutional coordination and a top-down governance model. The initial consultations around the NAP have largely involved governmental actors, with minimal participation from independent women’s organizations or migrant and stateless representatives. This selective engagement risks reproducing the same exclusionary dynamics that WPS seeks to overcome.

The challenge, therefore, lies not only in finalizing a WPS National Action Plan but in broadening its scope, moving from a bureaucratic exercise to a transformative agenda that addresses the root causes of exclusion. Without an inclusive framework that encompasses citizens, stateless residents, and expatriate women, Kuwait’s engagement with WPS risks remaining a diplomatic gesture rather than a driver of genuine social change.

The Exclusionary Nature of Kuwaiti Citizenship

In Kuwait, citizenship is more than a legal status: it is the gateway to a wide range of social benefits, subsidized healthcare, education, public-sector employment, housing, interest-free marriage loans, monthly food rations, and more. Thus, to be Kuwaiti is often equated not merely with belonging, but with entitlement to material welfare. This starkly contrasts with the vast non-citizen population, expatriates, and bidūn, who inhabit a day-to-day reality defined by exclusion. The distinction between citizen and non-citizen is woven into the fabric of everyday life, reinforcing an identity that is both exclusive and hierarchical (Longva 1997).

The historical evolution of Kuwaiti nationality law has entrenched these exclusions. As early as 1948, “original Kuwaiti” status was defined through paternal lineage, Arab or Muslim heritage, and residence criteria (Crystal 1990). Reforms in 1959 and subsequent amendments progressively narrowed naturalization and imposed stricter conditions: the jus sanguinis principle was reinforced; citizenship became harder to obtain; revocation clauses were introduced. Over time, naturalization quotas were imposed, and eligibility was tied to religion (Muslim faith) or other restrictive criteria (Crystal 1990; Shultziner & Tétreault 2012). Political participation, moreover, was limited: only “original” Kuwaiti males (with forefathers resident before 1920) initially held full voting rights; even naturalized Kuwaiti men and many women remained excluded (Shultziner & Tétreault 2012).

Citizenship has thus operated as a mechanism of internal stratification, not just delineating nationals from foreigners, but distinguishing between tiers of nationals. First-class Kuwaitis or original Kuwaitis enjoy full rights, while naturalized citizens or those of “second-class” status often face persistent discrimination in political and social spheres. The expansion of the expatriate population and the challenge of demographic balance further motivated the state to fortify definitions of belonging.

One of the most striking recent developments is the sweeping citizenship revocation campaign launched in 2024–2025. A Supreme Committee was established to review all nationality files, employing new biometric tools (DNA, iris scans) and scrutinizing lineage claims. As of August 2025, nearly 50,000 individuals have reportedly been stripped of Kuwaiti citizenship (The National News 2025). Among those affected are thousands of women who had acquired citizenship through marriage (under Article 8), in some cases decades earlier. The revocations are justified on grounds of fraud, dual nationality, or "actions against the supreme interests" of the state, but critics argue the process may generate new cases of statelessness and consolidate exclusion.

This campaign underscores a fundamental tension: citizenship is not static or sacred in Kuwait but a conditional privilege subject to state review and revocation (Beaugrand 2011). It amplifies the message that belonging is revocable and that rights are contingent, not universal. In the context of WPS, this dynamic raises urgent questions: which women are protected, which voices are legitimized, and whose security is prioritized? The very foundations of WPS, participation, protection, and prevention, are challenged when the state itself can withdraw civic identity.

Gendered Dimensions of Exclusion

The exclusions embedded in Kuwait’s citizenship regime are profoundly gendered. Women’s access to rights, protection, and political participation is shaped not only by patriarchal law but also by a stratified hierarchy of belonging. Kuwaiti women citizens still face legal inequality, particularly in nationality law, which prevents them from passing citizenship to their children or foreign husbands. Yet this partial inclusion stands in sharp contrast to the position of bidūn and expatriate women, who remain outside the social contract altogether. For them, the promises of protection and participation at the core of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda are structurally denied.

Among the bidūn, women experience a double marginality. Their statelessness intersects with gender norms that restrict mobility and access to employment, education, and justice. Since the 1980s, state measures have eroded their limited access to public health and schooling, placing them in precarious dependence on male relatives or informal labor (Beaugrand 2011; Amnesty International 2023). Many bidūn women marry Kuwaiti men in the hope of securing rights for their children, yet nationality transfer remains uncertain and revocable. The 2024–25 wave of citizenship withdrawals further exposed the fragility of such arrangements: dozens of women who had obtained nationality through marriage reportedly lost it under the new review system, rendering them again “illegal residents.”

Expatriate women, domestic workers, nurses, and clerks face a different but related form of insecurity under the kafāla sponsorship regime. Their legal presence is tied to employers who control mobility, residence, and often wages. Abuses, including physical and sexual violence, remain widespread, while recourse to justice is minimal. The absence of a fixed minimum wage in the private sector and the exclusion of foreigners from the welfare system deepen this gendered vulnerability. These conditions, though rarely discussed within WPS frameworks, are central to understanding peace and security in Kuwait: they reveal how protection is distributed along lines of nationality and class rather than human need.

Within this broader landscape of exclusion, a small yet revealing instance of digital activism emerged during the COVID-19 lockdown: the Bedoon Women community. Founded in 2020 by three stateless women, it created a digital space on Instagram and Clubhouse to discuss topics often neglected even within male-dominated bidūn activism—mental health, menstrual health, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and everyday survival. The platform functioned as what Nancy Fraser (1990) calls a subaltern counterpublic: an alternative sphere where marginalized voices could articulate their experiences on their own terms. By combining emotional storytelling with political critique, the founders transformed care work and vulnerability into acts of resistance (Hamid & Al-Shammiry 2020; Husain 2023).

Online, these women temporarily inverted Kuwait’s gender and citizenship hierarchies. On Clubhouse, they imposed a rule that men could listen but not speak, turning patriarchal silence into feminist architecture. This deliberate structure created what Kassem and Hoppe (2023) describe as “emotional counterpublics,” arenas of voice rather than visibility. Yet the same digital tools that enabled expression also produced exhaustion. Under surveillance and without institutional protection, the founders faced harassment, internal disagreement, and burnout. As one of them told me during fieldwork for Identity Building in Jordan and Kuwait (Palgrave 2024): “We had to censor ourselves even in our pain.” Today, the account remains online but inactive, a memorial to both empowerment and fatigue.

The story of Bedoon Women illustrates how exclusion operates across WPS pillars.

• Participation: Stateless and migrant women are absent from policy dialogues, yet their online organizing demonstrates latent civic agency.
• Protection: Violence and exploitation persist precisely because legal identity determines who can claim justice.
• Prevention: Structural inequality breeds resentment and instability, undermining the notion of sustainable peace.
• Relief and Recovery: Informal networks of care, digital or physical, become substitutes for state support.

Through this lens, gender in Kuwait cannot be separated from citizenship. The lives of Kuwaiti, bidūn, and expatriate women reveal a continuum of precarious belonging where peace is maintained by control rather than inclusion. Integrating these realities into the country’s forthcoming WPS National Action Plan would mean acknowledging that security in Kuwait is not only about borders or diplomacy, it is about who counts as part of the nation, and whose safety is allowed to matter.

Expanding the WPS Framework for the Gulf

The Kuwaiti case demonstrates that the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda must evolve beyond its original, conflict-centered framing to address the structural inequalities and exclusions that undermine peace even in non-war contexts. In the Gulf, where political stability often coexists with profound social hierarchies, peace cannot be reduced to the absence of violence. Rather, it must be redefined in terms of social justice, human dignity, and belonging.

The forthcoming Kuwaiti National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS offers an opportunity to articulate such a shift. Instead of reproducing a narrow state-centered understanding of gender and security, the NAP could position Kuwait as a regional pioneer by adopting a human security approach, one that recognizes that insecurity stems not only from conflict but also from exclusion, statelessness, and dependency (UN Women Arab States 2021; Tétreault & Al-Mughni 1995; UNDP 2022). This would mean framing women’s empowerment not as a matter of symbolic representation, but as a strategy for resilience and inclusion across all layers of society.

To be transformative, Kuwait’s NAP should integrate diverse perspectives, from civil society, academia, and, crucially, from women of all residency statuses: citizens, stateless people, and expatriates. A participatory approach would ensure that the agenda reflects lived realities rather than institutional assumptions. Including the voices of migrant and stateless women would expand the meaning of “peace” in policy terms, grounding it in everyday life rather than in abstract security discourse.

Furthermore, the WPS framework could serve as a bridge linking gender equality to wider national reforms. The agenda’s four pillars naturally intersect with pressing domestic issues: labor rights and the regulation of the kafāla system (UNDP 2022); revision of the nationality law to allow women to transmit citizenship (participation); and stronger prevention of gender-based violence through both legal reform and social awareness campaigns (prevention and recovery).

Finally, the implications of such a shift extend beyond Kuwait. A genuinely inclusive WPS agenda would reframe the conversation across the Gulf, encouraging neighboring states to view peacebuilding not as post-conflict reconstruction, but as the continuous process of expanding justice and equality. Kuwait’s regional reputation for mediation and humanitarian diplomacy positions it to lead this reimagining. If pursued with courage and inclusiveness, its WPS National Action Plan could set a precedent for how Gulf societies, often seen as insulated from conflict, can still engage meaningfully with global norms by localizing them in the language of belonging, protection, and shared humanity.

Kuwait thus exemplifies how the Women, Peace and Security agenda, when applied in non-conflict settings, must contend with what might be called the infrastructure of exclusionary peace, a social order sustained by citizenship hierarchies rather than by violence. Here, belonging itself becomes securitized: access to welfare, recognition, and voice operate as instruments of governance rather than as rights. This reveals a form of “quiet conflict” at the heart of stability, where the absence of war conceals deep asymmetries of power and visibility. Integrating a WPS perspective into such a context means rethinking peace not as protection from external threat but as emancipation from internalized inequality.

Conclusion

Kuwait stands as a case study of how the exclusionary nature of citizenship and belonging affects the integration of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, particularly through its hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion among citizens, bidūn, and expatriates. Oil, in this sense, has not been only wealth. It has been a disruptive force, an internal war on heritage, on memory, and ultimately on belonging. Long before Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait in 1990, the demolition of the old city, the zoning of its new spaces, and the social hierarchies encoded in citizenship had already redrawn the landscape of who could belong (Crystal 1995; Al-Nakib 2016). The spatial violence that modernization inflicted on the built environment mirrors the social violence of exclusion that continues to structure Kuwaiti society today.

Just as oil modernity erased courtyards and alleyways in the name of progress, the legal and bureaucratic architecture of nationality has erased lives from the social map: bidūn rendered invisible, migrant women confined by the kafāla system, and even citizens reminded of the revocability of their belonging. These forms of erasure, urban, legal, and symbolic, are part of the same continuum. They reveal that “peace” can coexist with profound insecurity, and that the absence of war does not guarantee the presence of justice.

Reimagining the Women, Peace and Security agenda in Kuwait, therefore, means confronting these silent wars. True peace will begin when memory, citizenship, and space can again be shared.