KUWAIT: Lawmakers are moving quickly to propose solutions to the plight of over 110,000 stateless people or bedoons living in the country. Five MPs submitted a draft law yesterday calling to move the central agency for bedoons under the interior ministry, saying this would accelerate resolving their problem. The agency has been accused of deliberately obstructing any solution to the bedoon crisis.

A meeting of the agency yesterday chaired by the interior minister discussed ways to speed up naturalizing bedoons who qualify for citizenship. Head of the interior and defense committee MP Askar Al-Enezi said yesterday that 10 lawmakers will submit a proposal calling to vote on a law that determines the number of people who can be naturalized this year. This is one of the avenues to resolve the bedoon problem, he said. Enezi said the committee yesterday also approved an amendment to the army law to allow the admission of bedoons in the armed forces.

Separately, Human Rights Watch yesterday commended a decision by Kuwait to drop a controversial counterterrorism law mandating DNA testing for all citizens, residents and visitors, which had been passed following a 2015 suicide attack. "The court's decision to overturn the DNA law is a very positive step that ends this misguided and hastily passed invasion of privacy in Kuwait," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.

The law was passed by parliament in 2015 after a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque which killed 26 people and wounded 227 others. Najd Province, the Saudi Arabian affiliate of the Islamic State group, claimed the June 2015 suicide attack. The group considers Shiites heretics. Kuwait's constitutional court, which oversees the compliance of law with the constitution, ruled on Oct 5 the DNA law unconstitutional on the grounds that it contravened articles on personal liberty.

The legislation - which made Kuwait the only country to require compulsory DNA testing - had required citizens, foreign residents and visitors and tourists to submit DNA samples for storage in a database run by the interior ministry. Those who failed to comply could be jailed and fined $33,000.

By B Izzak