Sides Keen To Citizenize Bedouns

The National Assembly and the government exhibited keenness to grant citizenship to deserving Bedouns during the parliamentary Interior and Defense Committee meeting Thursday.

The chairperson of the Central System for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents (CSRSIR) attended the meeting, during which the committee discussed reasons behind the failure to naturalize 4,000 Bedouns last year as per Law No. 12/2018.

Committee Rapporteur MP Naif Al-Merdaas pointed out that several justifications were given for the delayed implementation of the law, foremost of which are setbacks that led to failure of the Evaluation Committee to submit final application reports until the last week of December 2018. He stressed the need to finalize this case in order to ensure that none of those eligible for naturalization are legally wronged. He called for thorough review of the data and documents of those who failed to fulfill the conditions for naturalization rather than relying on observations and security restrictions alone which has been the practice since 2012. He also proposed the formation of a committee consisting of representatives from six concerned bodies to evaluate the citizenship applications regularly.

In a related development, MP Safa Al-Hashem submitted queries to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Lieutenant General Sheikh Khaled Al-Jarrah about Bedouns. She wants to know the number of Bedouns in the 1965 census and number of those granted citizenship among these Bedouns. She underscored the importance of this issue and its impact on society. She requested for detailed documentation on the number of Bedouns who have been naturalized since 1990, number of those included in the latest naturalization list, and comprehensive explanation of their naturalization eligibility.

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