Kuwait

The State of Kuwait — Dawlat al-Kuwayt in Arabic — is a small emirate nestled between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with a total area of 17,818 square km.¹ It lies within one of the driest and least hospitable stretches of desert on Earth.¹ Its coast, however, opens onto Kuwait Bay, a deep harbour on the Persian Gulf.¹ It was there, in the 18th century, that Bedouin from the interior founded their trading post.¹ The deep harbour of Kuwait Bay gave the young settlement its natural port on the gulf.¹ The gulf, not the desert, gave the young settlement its link to the wider world.¹ The bay's deep water has served Kuwait since the earliest settlement.¹ From that post grew a state in which most of the population lives in Kuwait City, making Kuwait one of the world's most-urbanized countries.¹ Today the country is a compact, highly urbanized state facing the Persian Gulf.¹

The name Kuwait comes from the Arabic diminutive of the Hindustani kūt, which means “fort”.¹ In 1756 the ruling family, the Āl Ṣabāḥ, formally established a sheikhdom, and Kuwait's fortunes have been linked to foreign commerce ever since.¹ The Āl Ṣabāḥ have held the emirate ever since.¹ Over the generations, and with accumulated wealth, the small fort grew into Kuwait City, a modern metropolis where skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and mosques stand together.¹ Because Kuwait City holds most of the country's population, Kuwait ranks among the world's most-urbanized countries.¹ The capital grew out of the small fort of the trading era.¹ Skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and mosques mark the modern skyline of the capital.¹

Kuwait's total area is 17,818 square km, and its capital is Kuwait City.¹ Arabic is the official language, and Islam the official religion.¹ The national currency is the Kuwaiti dinar; one US dollar equals 0.309 dinar.¹ The country is a constitutional monarchy ruled by an emir from the Āl Ṣabāḥ family.¹

In Kuwait, true soils are almost entirely absent from the natural landscape.¹ What soils there are yield little to agriculture and contain very little organic matter.¹ Wind-laid and sedimentary deposits cover much of the ground, and the soils are heavily salted, especially in basins and other places where residual water pools.¹ Basins and low places where water lingers are the saltiest ground.¹ Little of the land is suited to cultivation.¹ Agriculture therefore plays only a modest part in the country's landscape and economy.¹

The Persian Gulf War left a deep environmental wound: the desert's rigid surface layer, which held underlying sand deposits in place, was widely destroyed.¹ As a result, more sand now travels on the wind, and the dunes have grown larger and more numerous.¹ The desert surface, once held firm by that layer, now shifts more freely with the wind.¹ The war, in this way, left a lasting mark on Kuwait's desert terrain itself.¹

Along the gulf, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia long shared a territory of 2,200 square miles (5,700 square km) as a neutral zone, until the two countries agreed on a political boundary in 1969.¹ Each country now administers half of the zone, known as the Neutral, or Partitioned, Zone.¹ Yet they continue to divide equally the oil revenues of the entire area.¹ The zone remains a distinctive feature of Kuwait's border arrangements with Saudi Arabia.¹ Kuwait administers half of the Neutral, or Partitioned, Zone today.¹

Kuwait's shore includes Kuwait Bay, a deep harbour on the Persian Gulf.¹ The bay shelters the country's maritime front and provided the early settlement its port.¹ Beyond the coast, the land runs into one of the driest, least-hospitable deserts on Earth.¹ The gulf shore is Kuwait's window to the sea.¹

Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy whose single legislative body is the National Assembly.¹ The current monarch is Emir Sheikh Mishal al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah.¹ He is assisted by Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammad Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah.¹ The Āl Ṣabāḥ family has ruled Kuwait since it established the sheikhdom in 1756.¹ Executive power is concentrated in the emir and his appointed council.¹

The emir governs through a Council of Ministers, which he appoints and which is largely composed of members of his own family.¹ The prime minister himself is drawn from the ruling family.¹ The Council of Ministers carries out the emir's government.¹

Voters elect the National Assembly's 50 members to four-year terms.¹ Cabinet ministers sit in the parliament too, and the chamber has been dissolved several times.¹ Political parties are banned, yet quasi-political organizations still find representation in parliament.¹ Appointed ministers and elected members thus share Kuwait's political stage.¹ Elections bring the assembly back every four years.¹

Conservative elements in society long resisted reforms such as women's suffrage, which women gained only in 2005.¹ The result is a political order in which family rule, an appointed cabinet, and an elected assembly coexist.¹

Oil sits at the very centre of Kuwait's economy: virtually all of the nation's wealth comes, directly or indirectly, from petroleum extraction and processing.¹ Since the 1970s, the oil industry has expanded steadily and rapidly — the most dramatic element of the country's economic development.¹ Petroleum extraction and processing, in short, touch nearly every part of national economic life.¹ Few sectors of the economy stand outside the oil industry's reach.¹

Kuwait holds nearly one-tenth of the world's proven oil reserves, a stock large enough to sustain current production for roughly 150 years.¹ The country also holds considerable reserves of natural gas.¹ These endowments place Kuwait among the world's most oil-rich countries.¹ Natural gas deepens the country's energy wealth.¹ The reserves underpin both state revenue and exports.¹

Thanks to oil and overseas investments, Kuwait enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.¹ Petroleum and petroleum-derived products make up almost all of Kuwait's exports, and Asia and the Middle East are their most important markets.¹ The World Bank recorded Kuwait's GDP at about 157.2 billion current US dollars in 2025, down from about 160.9 billion in 2024.² GDP per capita stood at about 32,312 US dollars in 2025, down from about 32,856 in 2024.² The population was recorded at about 4.87 million in 2025, down from about 4.90 million in 2024.² Life expectancy at birth reached about 84.6 years in 2024, up from about 83.2 in 2023.² Both output and income eased slightly between 2024 and 2025, by the World Bank's measures.²

From 1899 until 1961, Kuwait stood as a British protectorate.¹ When the protectorate ended, the country became an independent state.¹ The protectorate era followed the long line of Āl Ṣabāḥ sheikhs who had governed since 1756.¹ During those decades, the emirate remained a small community bound by its trading links to the wider world.¹

When Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, more than half of the population fled the country.¹ Many of those who fled took refuge in foreign countries until the occupation was reversed.¹ The occupation drove Kuwaitis abroad in huge numbers.¹ The invasion came decades after Kuwait's independence in 1961.¹

In February 1991, a United Nations coalition led by the United States launched an offensive and drove Iraq's army out of Kuwait within days.¹ Retreating Iraqi troops set more than 700 of Kuwait's oil wells alight, an act of destruction that caused an environmental disaster across the entire region.¹ By autumn 1991 the fires were out, and production soon climbed back to preinvasion levels.¹

In May 1991, as hundreds of thousands of Kuwaitis came home from foreign refuges, the full damage of the invasion, the looting, and the war became clear.¹ The returning families found their homes damaged by invasion, looting, and war.¹ Amid an otherwise turbulent region, Kuwait has been called an “oasis” of peace and safety.¹

Kuwait has largely recovered from the war, and once again its per capita income is among the highest in the world.¹ The post-war recovery restored the country's economic standing.¹

Kuwait City began as a small, mud-walled town that lived from fishing, pearling, and trade.¹ Pearling and fishing sustained the town long before the oil age.¹ After World War II, as the petroleum industry developed, the city grew rapidly into a flourishing administrative, commercial, and financial center.¹ The old wall was removed in 1957.¹ The maritime trades shaped the city's early character.¹ The mud-walled town became the administrative, commercial, and financial center of the country.¹

Al Sadu is the traditional weaving of a textile that Bedouin women make on a ground loom.³ The weavers work the natural fibres of their environment into a tightly woven, durable cloth.³ Bright colours such as reds and oranges enliven the textile.³ The patterns mirror the desert in a simple, pure form, their geometric designs flowing in rhythmic repetition and symmetry.³

Traditional weaving of Al Sadu was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020 by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.³ In 2025, Qatar joined the nomination, which was inscribed that year under Decision 20.COM 7.b.54.³ The inscription recognizes the craft as part of humanity's shared intangible heritage.³ The UNESCO list now carries the craft under the joint file of three states.³

The primary bearers of Al Sadu are older Bedouin women who are master weavers.³ They transmit the related skills to others, most often within their households.³ With time, the textile has shifted from a functional object to a symbol of shared tradition and culture.³

Kuwait is a small emirate nestled between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.¹ In the 18th century, Bedouin from the interior founded a trading post on the shore of Kuwait Bay.¹ The name Kuwait is derived from the Arabic diminutive of the Hindustani kūt, meaning "fort."¹ Since the emirate's ruling family, the Āl Ṣabāḥ, formally established a sheikhdom in 1756, the country's fortunes have been linked to foreign commerce.¹ In time and with accumulated wealth, the small fort grew to become Kuwait city, a modern metropolis mingling skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and mosques.¹

Following the development of Kuwait's petroleum industry after World War II, Kuwait City rapidly grew into a flourishing administrative, commercial, and financial center.¹ Kuwait City's old wall was removed in 1957.¹

True soils scarcely exist naturally in Kuwait; those that exist have little agricultural productivity and extremely low organic matter.¹ A high degree of salinity is found in Kuwait's soils, particularly in basins where residual water pools.¹ One environmental consequence of the Persian Gulf War was the widespread destruction of the desert's rigid surface layer, leading to more wind-borne sand and larger, more numerous dunes.¹

A territory of 2,200 square miles (5,700 square km) along the gulf was shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as a neutral zone until a political boundary was agreed in 1969; each country now administers half, while sharing equally the oil revenues of the whole area.¹

A United Nations coalition led by the United States drove Iraq's army out of Kuwait within days of launching an offensive in February 1991.¹ The damage from the invasion, looting, and war became clear as hundreds of thousands of Kuwaitis returned from foreign refuges to their homes in May 1991.¹ By the fall of 1991, the oil-well fires had been extinguished, and production soon returned to preinvasion levels.¹ Kuwait has largely recovered from the effects of the war and again has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.¹ Kuwait has been called an "oasis" of peace and safety amid an otherwise turbulent region.¹

The steady and rapid expansion of Kuwait's oil industry since the 1970s has been the most dramatic element of the country's economic development.¹ The income generated by oil and overseas investments gave Kuwait one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.¹ Petroleum and petroleum-derived products account for almost all of Kuwait's exports, with Asia and the Middle East being the most important markets.¹ Kuwait also has considerable natural gas reserves.¹ The World Bank recorded Kuwait's GDP per capita at about 32,312 US dollars in 2025, down from about 32,856 in 2024.² The World Bank recorded Kuwait's life expectancy at birth at about 84.6 years in 2024, up from about 83.2 in 2023.²