Saudi Arabia Issues - 2023

Disputes - international

Saudi Arabia-Bahrain: none identified

Saudi Arabia-Iraq:  Saudi Arabia has been building a fence along its border with Iraq to keep out militants and smugglers

Saudi Arabia-Jordan: Jordan and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement to demarcate their maritime borders in 2007

Saudi Arabia-Kuwait: Kuwait and Saudi Arabia continue discussions on a maritime boundary with Iran; in December 2019, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait signed an agreement to demarcate land in a neutral zone and to restart oil production in shared fields, which had been suspended since 2014 because of disagreements

Saudi Arabia-Oman: none identified

Saudi Arabia-Qatar: none identified

Saudi Arabia-UAE: Saudi Arabia and UAE have disputed the Shaybah oilfield, which Saudi Arabia controls

Saudi Arabia-Yemen: the two countries signed the Treaty of Jeddah in 2000, which specified the coordinates of their land and maritime border and made provisions for grazing, the placement of armed forces, and future resource exploitation; in 2010, Saudi Arabia reinforced its concrete-filled security barrier along sections of the now fully demarcated border with Yemen to stem illegal crossborder activities

Refugees and internally displaced persons

stateless persons: 70,000 (2022); note - thousands of biduns (stateless Arabs) are descendants of nomadic tribes who were not officially registered when national borders were established, while others migrated to Saudi Arabia in search of jobs; some have temporary identification cards that must be renewed every five years, but their rights remain restricted; most Palestinians have only legal resident status; some naturalized Yemenis were made stateless after being stripped of their passports when Yemen backed Iraq in its invasion of Kuwait in 1990; Saudi women cannot pass their citizenship on to their children, so if they marry a non-national, their children risk statelessness

Illicit drugs

regularly sentences drug traffickers to the death penalty, although a moratorium on executions for drug offences has been in place since at least 2020; improving anti-money-laundering legislation and enforcement