Yearbook 2016

Kuwait. Falling oil prices caused a budget deficit to arise after 16 years of surplus. The deficit amounted to $ 15 billion in the fiscal year ending last March and was heading for double the following fiscal year. Oil revenues were estimated to fall to one third compared to two years earlier.

According to countryaah, the current population of Kuwait is 4,270,582. the government responded with plans to abolish subsidies, raise taxes and sell state corporations. When the government announced at short notice that fuel subsidies would be withdrawn, critical voices were raised in Parliament, which would otherwise be considered essentially government-friendly. Among other things, gasoline prices rose on September 1 by between 40 and 80%.

Kuwait Population 2016

The growing criticism was believed to be a contributing reason for the emir’s dissolution in October one year in advance, although he did so with a vague reference to the “security situation”. Parts of the opposition chose to continue the boycott that began in 2012, while others, not least Islamists, decided to participate. In the elections, the opposition went strong and won nearly half of the 50 seats, which was seen as an expression of dissatisfaction with the austerity measures. Despite this, the Emir gave the Prime Minister the task of re-forming a government and all ministers belonging to the royal family were allowed to remain.

In May, in an unusual case, a sibling was sentenced to the emir and two other members of the royal family to five years in prison for offending the emir.

A law was passed which meant that, for the first time, the country’s approximately 600,000 domestic workers were entitled to a minimum wage as well as the right to twelve hours of working day and 30 days off per year. Kuwait became the first country in the region to provide some employment protection to the domestic workers, who were mostly Asian migrant workers.

  • Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the 3-letter abbreviation of KWT stands for the nation of Kuwait in geography.

Kuwait’s older history

It has been settled in Kuwait for an estimated 6,000 years, essentially by nomadic people, and with the oldest archaeological traces from an ancient civilization on the island of Failaka. Here are also traces of Greek colonization, dating to the fourth century BCE. The Greeks called the island of Ikaros, and it is Kuwait’s most important archaeological site. In the last century BCE. the area came under the influence of the partisan (Persian) kingdom, and was associated with Mesopotamia, before the region in 224 was subject to the Sasanids. Islam’s entry into the 630s led to clashes between Arabs and Persians in later Kuwait. From the end of the ninth century, the area was integrated with other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. In the 14th century, the area comprising Kuwait became part of Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. The first time a city in later Kuwait can be found on ancient maps is from 1765, when German explorer Carsten Niebuhr, a member of the Danish Arabia expedition (1761-67) called Kuwait Grane (in Arabic then known as Qurain)..

Immigration

The first permanent settlement in later Kuwait occurred as a result of immigration from the Arabian Peninsula, by members of the Utub tribe (Bani Utub) from Najd in today’s Saudi Arabia. Among these were members of the al-Sabah family, who founded the dynasty that has ruled Kuwait since 1756.

Trade and pearl fishing were the most important trade routes in Kuwait in the Middle Ages. Immigration from the Arab core areas in the 17th century led to a rise in trade, laying the foundations for the establishment of what became the state of Kuwait. Today’s capital, Kuwait City, began in the early 18th century and quickly became the commercial center of the area; in 1760 with a fleet of 800 dhower (sailboats) and approx. 10,000 inhabitants. The city grew even faster as the British East India Company established itself after the Persian occupation of Basra in 1776, and Kuwait became a center of trade between India, the Horn of Africa, Najd, Mesopotamia and the Levant – after much of the trade over Basra was moved. to Kuwait.

State formation

According to thereligionfaqs, documents show that Kuwait may have been established in 1613, but the establishment of the state of Kuwait is usually attributed to 1756, when several leading clans elected a leader, a sheikh (sheikh) from the Sabah family, Sabah bin Jaber, Kuwait’s first emir. At the same time, another family, al-Khalifa, came to power in Bahrain- having first been detained in Kuwait. Its relocation to Bahrain in 1766 strengthened al-Sabah’s control of Kuwait. One of the reasons why a sheikh was chosen was to have overall leadership in relation to the Ottoman Empire. Through the Ottoman rule in Iraq, Kuwait was formally part of the Ottoman Empire from the early 17th century (as a district under the province of Basra), but the country retained its autonomy. Towards the end of the 1880s, under Sheikh Abdullah, relations with the Ottoman Empire became closer, but the development was again reversed by the successor, Sheikh Mubarak (Mubarak “the Great”), who in 1892 came to power by executing his half-brother Abdallah.