Forty-three MPs voted in favour of a bill on Wednesday with only two abstentions. In order to take effect, the law must now be signed by the Amir of Kuwait.

“While this bill is a welcome step, the Kuwaiti government must intensify its efforts to find a lasting solution for all the Bidun in the country,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director for Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“The Bidun’s human rights must be upheld without discrimination, in particular their rights to health, education and work.

“The absence of policies to resolve the plight of the Bidun, rooted in human rights standards, is a stain on the country’s international reputation. It deprives thousands of Bidun families of their basic political, economic and social rights and bars them from contributing fully to Kuwaiti society.”

In February, the Kuwait parliament passed the first reading of the bill, which stipulated the naturalisation of at least 4,000 of Kuwait’s stateless people. The bill has since been amended from “4,000 stateless” to a “maximum of 4,000 foreigners”, which could essentially exclude the Bidun, or at least limit the number that could receive citizenship.

Amnesty International has previously raised concerns about the Bidun and, in October 2012, Kuwait’s Prime Minister, Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah told Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Salil Shetty, that his government would resolve the status of the Bidun people within five years.

In the past the Kuwaiti government pledged to address some Bidun’s grievances but stated that only 34,000 Bidun were eligible for citizenship.

The benefits for Bidun that were promised by the Government in April 2011 have not yet materialised, leaving many Bidun without access to employment, health care, education, and other vital public services, as well as documents such as birth certificates. Bidun children are excluded from primary and secondary education.

Inspired by protests which broke out in 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa region, the Bidun community have protested peacefully since February 2011, demanding to be recognized as citizens of Kuwait.

The security forces have used force to disperse demonstrations and arrested protesters, some of whom are facing trial for participating in the demonstrations.

The Kuwait Criminal Court this week reportedly postponed until 19 May 2013 the trial of 33 Bidun for participating in “unauthorised demonstrations” in December 2012.

Background Information

Many Bidun are descended from nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed freely across the borders of the Gulf countries. Their ancestors did not apply for nationality around the time Kuwait gained independence in 1961. As a result, the Bidun have been trapped in limbo and denied Kuwaiti nationality and access to some public services.

Stricken by a typhoon of austerity measures, facing titanic hurdles of unemployment, poverty and desperation, Greek society is literally between the hammer and the anvil. However, apart from the burning wave of anger, fury and sadness, among the citizens caused by the financial crisis, Greece is also torn by an explosion of xenophobic even racist responses.

These strong sentiments seem somehow justified. Every now and then, articles are published, blaming immigrants for the crisis, television shows are exposing sinning foreigners, illegal immigrants, dangerous criminals.

Motos such as “you are not becoming a Greek, you are born a Greek “, “proud to be a Greek” are becoming popular especially among the young. All of a sudden, Greeks have been transformed to a nation without memory, selectively forgetting their own past, present and unfortunately future as immigrants, as foreigners in a strange land.

From police operations with the awfully sarcastic title “Xenios Dias” to raids of the ultra-right party “Golden Dawn” and people who admire their political agenda to working immigrants and foreigners, that have resulted to major injuries even deaths, discrimination, racism and hate are becoming more and more tolerated by the society. A society that stays still, like a speechless theatre audience watching passively, the escalating violence and brutality.

Violence is not limited to the physical or verbal abuse. Violence is also the discrimination, the blockage, the exclusion of any dignity, security and respect the integration within the society might offer. How this integration is achieved for a foreigner? Only by his legal status, his naturalisation as a proud to be citizen of the country that has become his adopted homeland.

In Greece is very difficult to obtain legal status as an immigrant or a refugee. Most people are caught in a maze of bureaucracy, frustration and fear. It is almost impossible to obtain naturalisation status unless you are married to a Greek citizen and having Greek children. An excruciating, exhausting process has to be followed including language and history tests, high fees and often a specialist’s highly paid advice, with ambiguous results.

Greece is facing a “painful” truth that was resting for decades to oblivion. Immigrants do exist on its soil, they do obtain legal status eventually, and they do raise a family, children that will eventually go to school, will participate actively in the society. These children do follow the fate of their parents, being denied naturalisation. They will always remain strangers, foreigners, outcasts. Their residence, affiliations, taxes, contribution to society as workers is simply ignored, is non-existent. The state simply does not consider all of the above as sufficient for naturalisation; they do not prove alliance with the country. What does?

This is certainly a rhetorical question in a country where an American citizen of Greek descent can be naturalised even if he or she is completely alienated from the country, but due to his bloodline retains the right to be naturalised. Although Greeks do take pride of their fellow citizens of the world, they cannot tolerate the presence of foreigners on their land. Giving the chance to immigrants to naturalise would only benefit the country. Would create a homogenous population, contributing positively to society by paying taxes, studying, working, being grateful for their residency rights. Instead what is created is a house divided against itself; that house will not be able to stand.

According to the new draft law to be tabled in parliament, children of migrants in Greece will have to wait longer and file a lot more paperwork in order to apply for Greek citizenship, a report published by Eleytherotypia says.

On the other hand, foreigners who intend to invest in the country will face fewer obstacles in obtaining the Greek citizenship as they will be eligible for a ‘fast-track procedure’, according to the report.

The Council of State deemed unconstitutional the law, which was passed in 2010 and which is known as the Ragousis law after former Interior Minister Yiannis Ragousis a few weeks ago. The law allows those born to immigrant parents and legally resident in Greece for five years to get citizenship if they have studied at a Greek school for at least six years.

The changes include: increase in the number of schooling for children of migrants from 6 to 9 years and the increase in the number of years of residence of their parents from 5 to 7 or 8 years. Also, naturalised Greeks will be forced to give up their first nationality.

“ I was born in Greece. I am 26 and still don’t have a Greek citizenship,” Egyptian Nerveen Awad says.

“Especially when someone is actually born in a certain country, is speaking its language as though it were one’s mother tongue, has been taught its history ever since one was a child and has set up one’s life there it always seemed logical to me that one could also choose to become an official citizen of that country, but this is not the case in Greece,” she says.

Meanwhile, nineteen migrant rights groups gathered in central Athens on Tuesday evening at a press conference hosted by the journalists’ union ESHEA to protest against the court’s recent new ruling concerning the Ragousis law, Kathimerini writes.

In a joint statement, the 19 migrant groups accused the government of “adopting a right-wing agenda” with its decision to challenge the law.

Immigrants make up 10 percent of the country’s population.

For years, up until 2010, a person’s citizenship was determined solely by his or her parents’ citizenship. Only those with blood ties to Greece could become Greek citizens.