Fully Authoritarian
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Population
HRF classifies Kuwait as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The State of Kuwait is a hereditary emirate in which, prior to the suspension of the legislature by royal decree in May 2024, elected members of the unicameral National Assembly and the partially independent judiciary checked the otherwise broad powers of the dynastic al-Sabah monarchy. Kuwaiti citizens, who enjoy relative political and civil freedoms, comprise a minority 30 percent of the population of the country, while foreign residents and the Bidoon, a community of stateless people indigenous to the Gulf region who claim Kuwait as their national homeland, are systematically denied access to the political and social privileges of citizenship. Since the spread of protests against authoritarian regimes across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, often referred to as the Arab Spring, the regime in Kuwait has made both democratizing reforms and regressive actions. The present emir, Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, came to power in late 2023 and, under the pretext of enacting much-needed reforms, he suspended parliament and two articles of the constitution in May 2024 for a period of “not more than four years” in response to prolonged gridlock between his cabinet and elected legislators. While some in Kuwait remain optimistic about potential reforms, the removal of significant popular checks on the al-Sabah family has resulted in controversial policies, such as the removal of citizenship from more than 40,000 naturalized Kuwaitis, resulting in abrupt statelessness and a lack of rights for nearly three percent of the citizen population in the year following the suspension of parliament.
National elections in Kuwait have been absent since the suspension of parliament in May 2024. Prior to the suspension, elections for the National Assembly were competitive and procedurally free and fair despite the regime prohibiting the formation of political parties and sometimes using the controversial National Assembly Election Law of 2016, known colloquially as the Offender Law, to disqualify opposition candidates convicted under unfair defamation laws. Candidates with Salafi, Muslim Brotherhood, liberal, populist, and leftist platforms have won increasingly larger electoral majorities from 2016 to 2024, forming a fluid opposition coalition that broadly checked the regime. Under the pretext of resolving political gridlock that arises from such popular checks on its authority, the regime has regularly abused its constitutional authority to dissolve the National Assembly, triggering frequent snap elections, nullifying democratically introduced legislation in parliamentary dockets, and forcing candidates to focus on expensive campaigns.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society organizations, and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime, while those who criticize or challenge the regime’s treatment of stateless persons and other politically sensitive regime policies face overt and systematic retaliation. In general, Kuwaiti citizens enjoy a vibrant civil society and a critical political sphere. However, the regime restricts the freedom to dissent by enforcing vague defamation and cybersecurity laws, manipulating the media and civil society, and repressing citizen activists who protest human rights abuses against non-citizens and the Bidoon. While the regime does not retaliate against all dissenting speech, it imposes high fines, long jail sentences, travel bans, and sometimes revokes the naturalized citizenship of its most outspoken critics, which may intimidate journalists, organizations, and regular people into self-censorship.
Institutions previously partially autonomous have become systematically controlled by the regime since Emir Meshal suspended parliament in 2024, assuming its legislative responsibilities and effectively eliminating the elected National Assembly’s capacity as an independent check. As a result, institutions fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The regime also exerts heavy influence over the judiciary, whose judges are partially independent yet tend to unfairly side with the regime in its attempts to limit the power of the elected opposition and silence voices critical of its human rights abuses. The courts protect the right of citizens to protest, yet regularly uphold politically motivated charges under vague defamation and cybersecurity laws, and have failed to check the regime’s suspension of parliament and two articles of the constitution.
National elections in Kuwait have been absent since the suspension of parliament in May 2024 by Emir Meshal. Prior to the suspension, elections for the National Assembly were competitive and procedurally free and fair. While the regime has taken steps to skew authority in its favor and undermine the ability of the opposition to challenge the ruling system, the voting process in Kuwait has been generally free of regime interference and has allowed a loosely defined coalition of opposition candidates to win a majority in all four elections from 2020-2024. Non-citizens, who make up 70 percent of Kuwait’s total population, have been entirely excluded from political participation and other constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Political authority is significantly skewed in favor of the regime. Executive power in Kuwait is held by the ruling al-Sabah family through the unelected emir, who appoints the prime minister and a number of the cabinet ministers, who run the government, from the royal family. The appointed members of the cabinet, although they do not have full voting power, draft and debate legislation and use control over state resources and their respective ministries to inhibit the implementation of policies that do not serve regime interests. The emir and the judiciary have also dissolved parliament and called snap elections to disrupt the opposition, which often acted as a democratic check against the executive. The present emir, Sheikh Meshal al-Sabah, has ordered two dissolutions of parliament as Crown Prince and a third less than two months after taking over as emir in December 2023. While the dissolution of parliament is a politically costly tactic, the regime frequently abuses its power to dissolve parliament to indirectly veto draft legislation it does not approve of and to disrupt the opposition by forcing snap elections. In May 2024, Sheikh Meshal suspended Kuwait’s elected National Assembly and assumed full power to rule for a period of up to four years.
The regime has not engaged in significant voting irregularities or electoral fraud, but has unfairly and significantly hindered the formation of political parties through a ban on formal political organizations. Kuwaiti citizens elected 50 members of parliament in free and fair elections at least every four years, with the next parliamentary elections due in 2028. Despite the ban on political parties, independent opposition candidates have won a majority or near majority of seats in all elections since 2016 and often organize in named political movements that resemble parties. These elections are generally free of regime interference, although opposition candidates sometimes face the arbitrary implementation of the 2016 Offender Law, which stipulates that candidates convicted on political charges of defaming religion, the Emir, the royal family, or allied countries are barred for life from running in elections. In 2020, opposition MP Bader al-Dahoum, for instance, was suspended from the Assembly for criticizing a political figure from the UAE, an ally of Kuwait. The Court of Cassation reinstated him shortly thereafter, only for the Constitutional Court to revoke his membership and ban him from running in future elections in 2021.
The regime has disenfranchised specific groups of voters, namely the Bidoon and naturalized citizens. Kuwait’s system granted citizens elected representation along with generous social welfare benefits, in part due to pressure placed on the royal family by some form of representative assembly since the 1930s. While more politically and fiscally accountable to the minority of citizen residents in the country, the regime deprives the majority of its resident population from accessing pathways to citizenship or securing rights that would prove costly to the royal family’s interests of minimizing opposition in parliament and maximizing state funds. As a result, the regime has taken systematic steps to maintain the stateless status of 100,000-300,000 Bidoon who are indigenous to the Gulf region and claim Kuwait as their national homeland, and has recently taken steps to reduce the number of citizens in the civil registry by withdrawing citizenship from over 40,000 naturalized citizens, including thousands of women who received citizenship through marriage.
Independent media, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime, while those who criticize or challenge the regime’s treatment of stateless persons and other politically sensitive policies, such as the 2024 suspension of parliament, face overt and systematic retaliation. While Kuwaiti citizens engage in robust political debates and associational life, the regime has instrumentalized legal statutes such as those against defamation and criticism of regional allies to target exemplary dissidents and encourage an environment of self-censorship on sensitive topics. Such self-censorship influences the work of media and civil society organizations, which tend to depoliticize their work to avoid regime retaliation. Kuwaiti citizens are generally allowed to protest with a few restrictions, but the regime systematically retaliates against demonstrations of support for the Bidoon stateless community.
The regime has seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent media, civil society leaders, and members of the general public. The regime abuses laws such as the Cybercrime Law, the National Security Law, and defamation laws that make insulting the Emir, royal family, political system, or regional allies grounds for arrest and imprisonment to target online dissenters, political opponents, the Bidoon, and their advocates. For example, in the aftermath of the emir’s unilateral suspension of parliament in 2024, the regime prosecuted at least five politicians, including parliamentary candidate Mesaed al-Quraifah for criticizing Kuwait’s system of governance and prominent former MP Walid al-Tabtabai for criticizing the regime and allies in a post that blamed the suspension on foreign influence. In another prominent case, the Supreme Court sentenced social media activist Salman al-Khalidi in absentia to five years in prison in 2023 on charges of “defaming” Saudi Arabia, “spreading false news,” and “offending the Emir” for his X posts criticizing violations of freedom of expression in the country and the regime’s failure to grant rights to the Bidoon. The regime uses the threat of enforcing these laws in high profile cases to instill self-censorship and depoliticize the work of dissenting actors, and, in extreme cases, the regime has ordered the withdrawal of citizenship and deportation of critics, such as in the case of Salwa Al-Sayed who was arrested in March 2025 for criticizing government decisions to remove naturalized citizenship in a social media post. The regime removed her citizenship, and a court ordered her deportation to Egypt within two days of her arrest.
The regime has systematically and disproportionately undermined marginalized groups’ ability to dissent. The regime especially targets stateless Bidoon activists and their citizen advocates with unfair detentions, torture, and revocation of naturalized citizenship. For example, Abdullah Fayrouz, a longtime activist advocating for Bidoon rights, served eight years (2013-2021) for insulting the Emir on X, was sentenced to exile, and had his naturalized citizenship revoked. He remained in Kuwait because no country would accept his deportation. The regime forcibly disappeared Fayrouz in early February 2024 and three weeks later brought him to a court that sentenced him to five years in prison on charges of “spreading false information about the state,” a sentence later reduced to three years by an appellate court. The regime sentenced another Bidoon activist, Mohammad al-Bargash, to three years in prison and hard labor in late January 2024 for “spreading false news and rumors abroad” while discussing the Bidoon in a TV interview. Al-Bargash was also arrested and fined in 2022 for participating in a peaceful protest for Bidoon rights.
Within a generally free media environment, the regime attempts to manipulate media coverage in its favor. All media organizations and bloggers in Kuwait must obtain expensive licenses from the Ministry of Information. Although not a systemic pattern, the Ministry of Information has been known to abuse its licensing powers to unfairly shut down and take organizations to court over violations of defamation and vague cybersecurity laws. For example, in June 2022, the Ministry of Information abused a real misinformation issue stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic to retaliate against critical outlets by withdrawing the licenses of 90 news websites and referring 73 outlets to the state prosecution for vague legal violations, including “the publication of false news.”
The regime has also unfairly obstructed the work of NGOs and CSOs by abusing the power of the Ministry of Social Affairs to reject licensure applications on the grounds of engaging in political work or not providing a public service. As a result, organizations are allowed to operate relatively freely in the country as long as they self-censor critique of the emir, ruling system, and regional allies. For example, prominent and well-established human rights monitoring and advocacy groups like KABEHR and the Kuwaiti Society for Human Rights focus on less politically-sensitive social issues such as human trafficking and the rights of certain groups such as women, people with disabilities, and foreign workers, but tend to avoid reporting on the regime’s human rights violations such as deportations of foreign workers without judicial review, enforcing travel bans on thousands of political opponents, revoking the naturalized citizenship of outspoken dissidents, and other arbitrary restrictions on the freedoms of expression and assembly. In August 2025, regime-appointed Minister of Social Affairs and Minister of Family and Childhood Affairs Dr. Amthal Al-Huwailah announced updates to the 2015 rules on associations that include a requirement for charitable organizations to “uphold national unity” and religious affairs, introducing an effective ban on charities participating in politics.
Despite these restrictions, Kuwaiti citizens are generally allowed to protest. Demonstrations of more than 20 people require a permit, and protests that do not make any noise are allowed without a permit. Security forces often shut down protests and arrest participants as an intimidation tactic, especially in response to demonstrations against citizenship revocations and in solidarity with the Bidoon, but the courts frequently acquit participants of these politically-motivated charges. Foreign workers, who make up a supermajority of more than 60 percent of the population, are not allowed to protest and often face unfair detention or deportation without judicial review for participating in peaceful demonstrations.
Institutions previously partially autonomous have become systematically controlled by the regime since Emir Meshal suspended parliament and articles of the constitution that require the election of parliament and prohibit suspending the constitution. As a result, institutions fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. Since May 2024, the emir has assumed all legislative duties by proxy of his appointed Council of Ministers and removed the ability of popularly elected officials to approve or interrogate these members of the executive government. The regime also exerts heavy influence over the judiciary, whose judges are partially independent yet tend to unfairly side with the regime in its attempts to limit the power of the elected opposition and silence voices critical of its human rights abuses. The courts protect the right of citizens to protest, yet regularly uphold politically motivated charges under vague defamation and cybersecurity laws, and have failed to check regime officials without significant public pressure.
The regime suspended the National Assembly and two articles of the constitution, effectively abolishing popular checks on the regime. Under the pretext of addressing persistent political deadlock between the emir-appointed government and popularly elected MPs, Emir Meshal announced in May 2024 the suspension of parliament, Article 107 of the constitution, which stipulates that a new parliament must be elected within two months of its dissolution, and Article 181, which prohibits the suspension of the constitution or the immunity of parliament members, for a period of “not more than four years.” Prior to the suspension, popularly elected MPs had the authority to approve regime appointments to the Council of Ministers and to interpellate and remove ministers through votes of no confidence. Since the suspension, Sheikh Meshal has assumed full power to rule through his appointed cabinet’s implementation of “draft laws,” which will address a number of mounting policy crises in Kuwait such as corruption, national debt, depleted cash reserves, housing, roads, education, and health care without popular input or elected checks on the governing authority for the first time since the emiri suspension of parliament from 1986 to 1992.
Despite an authoritarian balance of power that favored the hereditary monarch even prior to the suspension, Kuwait’s parliament retained comparatively significant popular checks against full authoritarian control. The members of parliament approved royal succession and cabinet appointments, introduced, debated, and amended legislation, and channeled popular pressure through interpellations and votes of no confidence. Parliamentary pressure prevented the emir from developing or selling state-owned land, as is done in other Gulf monarchies such as the UAE, which has preserved more of Kuwait for its people rather than solely enriching the royal family. The Assembly also voted to continue the prohibition of alcohol in the country despite the regime’s interests in relaxing restrictions to boost tourism. Members of parliament have regularly employed the threat of a vote of no confidence in ministers to hold regime officials accountable or force the emir and his government to compromise on policy, sometimes inducing full cabinet resignations and forcing the regime to appoint ministers who are not from the royal family or its allies.
Kuwait’s judiciary is partially independent. The regime appoints judges to top positions and approves other appointments, granting Kuwaiti citizens lifetime appointments with rare evidence of regime retaliation against judges who rule contrary to regime interests. However, according to available information, several hundred judges in Kuwait are foreign professionals working on limited, renewable contracts. This system addresses the shortage of legal professionals in the country, but discourages dissenting opinions within a majority of the judges who rely on the judiciary for residency in Kuwait. The courts tend to side with the regime in cases that challenge the ruling system and the use of vague laws, but check regime attempts to shut down licensed protests or use politically motivated charges to prosecute activists. The courts regularly acquit citizen protestors accused by the regime of participating in unlicensed demonstrations. However, in the context of the parliamentary suspension, the regime has taken action to undermine the judiciary’s ability to check certain politically sensitive actions, such as the revocation of citizenship of more than 40,000 naturalized Kuwaitis, including women who obtained citizenship through marriage.
Although the courts sometimes check the regime and hear challenges to its use of vague defamation laws to silence dissent, the judiciary unfairly sides with the regime by enforcing gag orders to restrict public discourse on politically sensitive cases, upholding vague and restrictive laws, and abusing its power to interfere with the National Assembly in ways that serve the Emir’s interests. The courts regularly uphold the disqualification of electoral candidates and nullification of membership in parliament – and deny their subsequent appeals – based on prior political convictions in each National Assembly election. In 2022, the Constitutional Court rejected the petition of four candidates who were barred from running in elections and upheld the controversial Offender Law from 2016. The Constitutional Court also dissolved the largely critical 2022 parliament in early 2023, reinstating the 2020 parliament that saw fewer opposition candidates and nullifying then Crown Prince Sheikh Meshal’s dissolution order. Acting on behalf of former emir Sheikh Nawaf, Sheikh Meshal dissolved the reinstated parliament a few months later, triggering snap elections in September 2023. As of November 2025, the Constitutional Court has failed to check the regime’s suspension of the National Assembly and Articles 107 and 181 of the constitution.
The courts also sometimes fail to hold regime officials accountable without significant public pressure, especially in first instance cases heard by the Special Court Judging the Liability of Ministers, a separate court with jurisdiction over cases brought against regime-appointed cabinet members who are often from the ruling al-Sabah family. In late 2019, the entirety of the regime-appointed government resigned after parliamentarians launched embezzlement accusations against former Minister of the Interior and Defense Sheikh Khaled al-Jarrah al-Sabah and former Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah, prompting the Ministry of Justice to announce legal investigations and enforce a media blackout on the issue. In 2022, the courts sent a political shockwave across the country when they acquitted both members of the royal family who were accused of embezzling 240 million KWD (780 million USD) in public funds. However, after public pressure, the Kuwaiti prosecution revived the case against both former ministers in late 2022, and Kuwait’s highest court ordered Sheikh Khalid al-Jarrah to seven years in prison, and Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak to return the funds he mismanaged.
HRF classifies Kuwait as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The State of Kuwait is a hereditary emirate in which, prior to the suspension of the legislature by royal decree in May 2024, elected members of the unicameral National Assembly and the partially independent judiciary checked the otherwise broad powers of the dynastic al-Sabah monarchy. Kuwaiti citizens, who enjoy relative political and civil freedoms, comprise a minority 30 percent of the population of the country, while foreign residents and the Bidoon, a community of stateless people indigenous to the Gulf region who claim Kuwait as their national homeland, are systematically denied access to the political and social privileges of citizenship. Since the spread of protests against authoritarian regimes across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, often referred to as the Arab Spring, the regime in Kuwait has made both democratizing reforms and regressive actions. The present emir, Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, came to power in late 2023 and, under the pretext of enacting much-needed reforms, he suspended parliament and two articles of the constitution in May 2024 for a period of “not more than four years” in response to prolonged gridlock between his cabinet and elected legislators. While some in Kuwait remain optimistic about potential reforms, the removal of significant popular checks on the al-Sabah family has resulted in controversial policies, such as the removal of citizenship from more than 40,000 naturalized Kuwaitis, resulting in abrupt statelessness and a lack of rights for nearly three percent of the citizen population in the year following the suspension of parliament.
National elections in Kuwait have been absent since the suspension of parliament in May 2024. Prior to the suspension, elections for the National Assembly were competitive and procedurally free and fair despite the regime prohibiting the formation of political parties and sometimes using the controversial National Assembly Election Law of 2016, known colloquially as the Offender Law, to disqualify opposition candidates convicted under unfair defamation laws. Candidates with Salafi, Muslim Brotherhood, liberal, populist, and leftist platforms have won increasingly larger electoral majorities from 2016 to 2024, forming a fluid opposition coalition that broadly checked the regime. Under the pretext of resolving political gridlock that arises from such popular checks on its authority, the regime has regularly abused its constitutional authority to dissolve the National Assembly, triggering frequent snap elections, nullifying democratically introduced legislation in parliamentary dockets, and forcing candidates to focus on expensive campaigns.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society organizations, and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime, while those who criticize or challenge the regime’s treatment of stateless persons and other politically sensitive regime policies face overt and systematic retaliation. In general, Kuwaiti citizens enjoy a vibrant civil society and a critical political sphere. However, the regime restricts the freedom to dissent by enforcing vague defamation and cybersecurity laws, manipulating the media and civil society, and repressing citizen activists who protest human rights abuses against non-citizens and the Bidoon. While the regime does not retaliate against all dissenting speech, it imposes high fines, long jail sentences, travel bans, and sometimes revokes the naturalized citizenship of its most outspoken critics, which may intimidate journalists, organizations, and regular people into self-censorship.
Institutions previously partially autonomous have become systematically controlled by the regime since Emir Meshal suspended parliament in 2024, assuming its legislative responsibilities and effectively eliminating the elected National Assembly’s capacity as an independent check. As a result, institutions fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The regime also exerts heavy influence over the judiciary, whose judges are partially independent yet tend to unfairly side with the regime in its attempts to limit the power of the elected opposition and silence voices critical of its human rights abuses. The courts protect the right of citizens to protest, yet regularly uphold politically motivated charges under vague defamation and cybersecurity laws, and have failed to check the regime’s suspension of parliament and two articles of the constitution.
National elections in Kuwait have been absent since the suspension of parliament in May 2024 by Emir Meshal. Prior to the suspension, elections for the National Assembly were competitive and procedurally free and fair. While the regime has taken steps to skew authority in its favor and undermine the ability of the opposition to challenge the ruling system, the voting process in Kuwait has been generally free of regime interference and has allowed a loosely defined coalition of opposition candidates to win a majority in all four elections from 2020-2024. Non-citizens, who make up 70 percent of Kuwait’s total population, have been entirely excluded from political participation and other constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Political authority is significantly skewed in favor of the regime. Executive power in Kuwait is held by the ruling al-Sabah family through the unelected emir, who appoints the prime minister and a number of the cabinet ministers, who run the government, from the royal family. The appointed members of the cabinet, although they do not have full voting power, draft and debate legislation and use control over state resources and their respective ministries to inhibit the implementation of policies that do not serve regime interests. The emir and the judiciary have also dissolved parliament and called snap elections to disrupt the opposition, which often acted as a democratic check against the executive. The present emir, Sheikh Meshal al-Sabah, has ordered two dissolutions of parliament as Crown Prince and a third less than two months after taking over as emir in December 2023. While the dissolution of parliament is a politically costly tactic, the regime frequently abuses its power to dissolve parliament to indirectly veto draft legislation it does not approve of and to disrupt the opposition by forcing snap elections. In May 2024, Sheikh Meshal suspended Kuwait’s elected National Assembly and assumed full power to rule for a period of up to four years.
The regime has not engaged in significant voting irregularities or electoral fraud, but has unfairly and significantly hindered the formation of political parties through a ban on formal political organizations. Kuwaiti citizens elected 50 members of parliament in free and fair elections at least every four years, with the next parliamentary elections due in 2028. Despite the ban on political parties, independent opposition candidates have won a majority or near majority of seats in all elections since 2016 and often organize in named political movements that resemble parties. These elections are generally free of regime interference, although opposition candidates sometimes face the arbitrary implementation of the 2016 Offender Law, which stipulates that candidates convicted on political charges of defaming religion, the Emir, the royal family, or allied countries are barred for life from running in elections. In 2020, opposition MP Bader al-Dahoum, for instance, was suspended from the Assembly for criticizing a political figure from the UAE, an ally of Kuwait. The Court of Cassation reinstated him shortly thereafter, only for the Constitutional Court to revoke his membership and ban him from running in future elections in 2021.
The regime has disenfranchised specific groups of voters, namely the Bidoon and naturalized citizens. Kuwait’s system granted citizens elected representation along with generous social welfare benefits, in part due to pressure placed on the royal family by some form of representative assembly since the 1930s. While more politically and fiscally accountable to the minority of citizen residents in the country, the regime deprives the majority of its resident population from accessing pathways to citizenship or securing rights that would prove costly to the royal family’s interests of minimizing opposition in parliament and maximizing state funds. As a result, the regime has taken systematic steps to maintain the stateless status of 100,000-300,000 Bidoon who are indigenous to the Gulf region and claim Kuwait as their national homeland, and has recently taken steps to reduce the number of citizens in the civil registry by withdrawing citizenship from over 40,000 naturalized citizens, including thousands of women who received citizenship through marriage.
Independent media, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime, while those who criticize or challenge the regime’s treatment of stateless persons and other politically sensitive policies, such as the 2024 suspension of parliament, face overt and systematic retaliation. While Kuwaiti citizens engage in robust political debates and associational life, the regime has instrumentalized legal statutes such as those against defamation and criticism of regional allies to target exemplary dissidents and encourage an environment of self-censorship on sensitive topics. Such self-censorship influences the work of media and civil society organizations, which tend to depoliticize their work to avoid regime retaliation. Kuwaiti citizens are generally allowed to protest with a few restrictions, but the regime systematically retaliates against demonstrations of support for the Bidoon stateless community.
The regime has seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent media, civil society leaders, and members of the general public. The regime abuses laws such as the Cybercrime Law, the National Security Law, and defamation laws that make insulting the Emir, royal family, political system, or regional allies grounds for arrest and imprisonment to target online dissenters, political opponents, the Bidoon, and their advocates. For example, in the aftermath of the emir’s unilateral suspension of parliament in 2024, the regime prosecuted at least five politicians, including parliamentary candidate Mesaed al-Quraifah for criticizing Kuwait’s system of governance and prominent former MP Walid al-Tabtabai for criticizing the regime and allies in a post that blamed the suspension on foreign influence. In another prominent case, the Supreme Court sentenced social media activist Salman al-Khalidi in absentia to five years in prison in 2023 on charges of “defaming” Saudi Arabia, “spreading false news,” and “offending the Emir” for his X posts criticizing violations of freedom of expression in the country and the regime’s failure to grant rights to the Bidoon. The regime uses the threat of enforcing these laws in high profile cases to instill self-censorship and depoliticize the work of dissenting actors, and, in extreme cases, the regime has ordered the withdrawal of citizenship and deportation of critics, such as in the case of Salwa Al-Sayed who was arrested in March 2025 for criticizing government decisions to remove naturalized citizenship in a social media post. The regime removed her citizenship, and a court ordered her deportation to Egypt within two days of her arrest.
The regime has systematically and disproportionately undermined marginalized groups’ ability to dissent. The regime especially targets stateless Bidoon activists and their citizen advocates with unfair detentions, torture, and revocation of naturalized citizenship. For example, Abdullah Fayrouz, a longtime activist advocating for Bidoon rights, served eight years (2013-2021) for insulting the Emir on X, was sentenced to exile, and had his naturalized citizenship revoked. He remained in Kuwait because no country would accept his deportation. The regime forcibly disappeared Fayrouz in early February 2024 and three weeks later brought him to a court that sentenced him to five years in prison on charges of “spreading false information about the state,” a sentence later reduced to three years by an appellate court. The regime sentenced another Bidoon activist, Mohammad al-Bargash, to three years in prison and hard labor in late January 2024 for “spreading false news and rumors abroad” while discussing the Bidoon in a TV interview. Al-Bargash was also arrested and fined in 2022 for participating in a peaceful protest for Bidoon rights.
Within a generally free media environment, the regime attempts to manipulate media coverage in its favor. All media organizations and bloggers in Kuwait must obtain expensive licenses from the Ministry of Information. Although not a systemic pattern, the Ministry of Information has been known to abuse its licensing powers to unfairly shut down and take organizations to court over violations of defamation and vague cybersecurity laws. For example, in June 2022, the Ministry of Information abused a real misinformation issue stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic to retaliate against critical outlets by withdrawing the licenses of 90 news websites and referring 73 outlets to the state prosecution for vague legal violations, including “the publication of false news.”
The regime has also unfairly obstructed the work of NGOs and CSOs by abusing the power of the Ministry of Social Affairs to reject licensure applications on the grounds of engaging in political work or not providing a public service. As a result, organizations are allowed to operate relatively freely in the country as long as they self-censor critique of the emir, ruling system, and regional allies. For example, prominent and well-established human rights monitoring and advocacy groups like KABEHR and the Kuwaiti Society for Human Rights focus on less politically-sensitive social issues such as human trafficking and the rights of certain groups such as women, people with disabilities, and foreign workers, but tend to avoid reporting on the regime’s human rights violations such as deportations of foreign workers without judicial review, enforcing travel bans on thousands of political opponents, revoking the naturalized citizenship of outspoken dissidents, and other arbitrary restrictions on the freedoms of expression and assembly. In August 2025, regime-appointed Minister of Social Affairs and Minister of Family and Childhood Affairs Dr. Amthal Al-Huwailah announced updates to the 2015 rules on associations that include a requirement for charitable organizations to “uphold national unity” and religious affairs, introducing an effective ban on charities participating in politics.
Despite these restrictions, Kuwaiti citizens are generally allowed to protest. Demonstrations of more than 20 people require a permit, and protests that do not make any noise are allowed without a permit. Security forces often shut down protests and arrest participants as an intimidation tactic, especially in response to demonstrations against citizenship revocations and in solidarity with the Bidoon, but the courts frequently acquit participants of these politically-motivated charges. Foreign workers, who make up a supermajority of more than 60 percent of the population, are not allowed to protest and often face unfair detention or deportation without judicial review for participating in peaceful demonstrations.
Institutions previously partially autonomous have become systematically controlled by the regime since Emir Meshal suspended parliament and articles of the constitution that require the election of parliament and prohibit suspending the constitution. As a result, institutions fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. Since May 2024, the emir has assumed all legislative duties by proxy of his appointed Council of Ministers and removed the ability of popularly elected officials to approve or interrogate these members of the executive government. The regime also exerts heavy influence over the judiciary, whose judges are partially independent yet tend to unfairly side with the regime in its attempts to limit the power of the elected opposition and silence voices critical of its human rights abuses. The courts protect the right of citizens to protest, yet regularly uphold politically motivated charges under vague defamation and cybersecurity laws, and have failed to check regime officials without significant public pressure.
The regime suspended the National Assembly and two articles of the constitution, effectively abolishing popular checks on the regime. Under the pretext of addressing persistent political deadlock between the emir-appointed government and popularly elected MPs, Emir Meshal announced in May 2024 the suspension of parliament, Article 107 of the constitution, which stipulates that a new parliament must be elected within two months of its dissolution, and Article 181, which prohibits the suspension of the constitution or the immunity of parliament members, for a period of “not more than four years.” Prior to the suspension, popularly elected MPs had the authority to approve regime appointments to the Council of Ministers and to interpellate and remove ministers through votes of no confidence. Since the suspension, Sheikh Meshal has assumed full power to rule through his appointed cabinet’s implementation of “draft laws,” which will address a number of mounting policy crises in Kuwait such as corruption, national debt, depleted cash reserves, housing, roads, education, and health care without popular input or elected checks on the governing authority for the first time since the emiri suspension of parliament from 1986 to 1992.
Despite an authoritarian balance of power that favored the hereditary monarch even prior to the suspension, Kuwait’s parliament retained comparatively significant popular checks against full authoritarian control. The members of parliament approved royal succession and cabinet appointments, introduced, debated, and amended legislation, and channeled popular pressure through interpellations and votes of no confidence. Parliamentary pressure prevented the emir from developing or selling state-owned land, as is done in other Gulf monarchies such as the UAE, which has preserved more of Kuwait for its people rather than solely enriching the royal family. The Assembly also voted to continue the prohibition of alcohol in the country despite the regime’s interests in relaxing restrictions to boost tourism. Members of parliament have regularly employed the threat of a vote of no confidence in ministers to hold regime officials accountable or force the emir and his government to compromise on policy, sometimes inducing full cabinet resignations and forcing the regime to appoint ministers who are not from the royal family or its allies.
Kuwait’s judiciary is partially independent. The regime appoints judges to top positions and approves other appointments, granting Kuwaiti citizens lifetime appointments with rare evidence of regime retaliation against judges who rule contrary to regime interests. However, according to available information, several hundred judges in Kuwait are foreign professionals working on limited, renewable contracts. This system addresses the shortage of legal professionals in the country, but discourages dissenting opinions within a majority of the judges who rely on the judiciary for residency in Kuwait. The courts tend to side with the regime in cases that challenge the ruling system and the use of vague laws, but check regime attempts to shut down licensed protests or use politically motivated charges to prosecute activists. The courts regularly acquit citizen protestors accused by the regime of participating in unlicensed demonstrations. However, in the context of the parliamentary suspension, the regime has taken action to undermine the judiciary’s ability to check certain politically sensitive actions, such as the revocation of citizenship of more than 40,000 naturalized Kuwaitis, including women who obtained citizenship through marriage.
Although the courts sometimes check the regime and hear challenges to its use of vague defamation laws to silence dissent, the judiciary unfairly sides with the regime by enforcing gag orders to restrict public discourse on politically sensitive cases, upholding vague and restrictive laws, and abusing its power to interfere with the National Assembly in ways that serve the Emir’s interests. The courts regularly uphold the disqualification of electoral candidates and nullification of membership in parliament – and deny their subsequent appeals – based on prior political convictions in each National Assembly election. In 2022, the Constitutional Court rejected the petition of four candidates who were barred from running in elections and upheld the controversial Offender Law from 2016. The Constitutional Court also dissolved the largely critical 2022 parliament in early 2023, reinstating the 2020 parliament that saw fewer opposition candidates and nullifying then Crown Prince Sheikh Meshal’s dissolution order. Acting on behalf of former emir Sheikh Nawaf, Sheikh Meshal dissolved the reinstated parliament a few months later, triggering snap elections in September 2023. As of November 2025, the Constitutional Court has failed to check the regime’s suspension of the National Assembly and Articles 107 and 181 of the constitution.
The courts also sometimes fail to hold regime officials accountable without significant public pressure, especially in first instance cases heard by the Special Court Judging the Liability of Ministers, a separate court with jurisdiction over cases brought against regime-appointed cabinet members who are often from the ruling al-Sabah family. In late 2019, the entirety of the regime-appointed government resigned after parliamentarians launched embezzlement accusations against former Minister of the Interior and Defense Sheikh Khaled al-Jarrah al-Sabah and former Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah, prompting the Ministry of Justice to announce legal investigations and enforce a media blackout on the issue. In 2022, the courts sent a political shockwave across the country when they acquitted both members of the royal family who were accused of embezzling 240 million KWD (780 million USD) in public funds. However, after public pressure, the Kuwaiti prosecution revived the case against both former ministers in late 2022, and Kuwait’s highest court ordered Sheikh Khalid al-Jarrah to seven years in prison, and Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak to return the funds he mismanaged.
