Kuwait City: Kuwait has set up a committee to look into ways to limit marriages between Kuwaiti men and foreign women.
The committee has been assigned the task of studying marriage applications with a view to reducing the number of marriages between Kuwaiti men and foreigners, the Al Qabas daily said Wednesday.
While most Kuwaiti men preferred to marry their countrywomen, hundreds do take foreign wives.
Their inability to pay thousands of dinars in dowry and exorbitant marriage and living costs has often been cited as the main reason Kuwaiti men marry foreigners.
Social responsibilities
Frequent travels abroad and the non-readiness of Kuwaiti men to assume their social responsibilities towards Kuwaiti families were also mentioned as reasons men took a foreign bride, a study published by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) showed.
Kuwaiti women would rather enter a mixed marriage than stay single.
A study of the 2008 marriages in Kuwait indicated that 9,238 Kuwaiti men had married Kuwaiti women.
When it came to foreign wives, Saudi women top the list (297), followed by Asians (199), Iraqis (147) and Syrians (100). The statistics said in 2008, Kuwaiti men married 37 Jordanians, 35 Lebanese, 24 Americans, 18 Europeans, 10 Africans, eight Bahrainis, six Yemenis, five Qataris, three UAE nationals and three Palestinians.
For Kuwaiti women, Saudi men topped the list of foreign husbands with 152, followed by Asians (52), Egyptians (42), Syrians (27), Qataris (26), Europeans (18), Americans (16), UAE nationals (14), Bahrainis (10), Lebanese (7), Palestinians (7), Jordanians (6), Yemenis (6) and Africans (3).
