A/HRC/7/23 page 20 64. The independent expert was further informed on the situation of the Bidun (which literally means “without” in Arabic), another minority group that has been disproportionately affected by amendments to laws on nationality following State reconstruction in the Gulf region - the independence of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar and the formation of the United Arab Emirates. In Kuwait, for example, there are an estimated 130,000 Bidun whose rights were revoked by law in the mid-1980s and who have since been unable to naturalize. They reportedly live in appalling conditions, are denied the right to employment, travel, education, free medical care, to register marriages or in most cases to hold a driving licence. Although the situation has reportedly not improved in Kuwait, other States have started to take measures to address the status of the Bidun within their territories. In 2001, Bahrain naturalized 2,090 Bidun, who were of Iranian origin but no longer maintained links with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2006, the United Arab Emirates issued directives allowing for the naturalization of the Bidun; in the first phase, the naturalization of approximately 1,294 Bidun was recorded.3 C. Europe 65. In Europe, a number of problems relate particularly to the way citizenship and nationality have been constructed in view of State succession and State restoration, as demonstrated in the countries of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. As in other regions, minority groups are disproportionately affected by the failure to register all children at birth and to issue identity documents to all citizens. As a result, in some States, members of the Roma minority and other populations are unable to exercise the full range of rights afforded by citizenship. 66. In Latvia, according to the Law on Citizenship, only persons who were citizens before 17 June 1940 and their descendants received automatic citizenship after independence in 1991, effectively excluding minorities such as ethnic Russian-speaking minorities. Since 1995, a process of naturalization has contributed to solving the problem, however, there are reportedly 400,000 non-citizens still in the country (an estimated 18 per cent of the population). In Estonia, the citizenship law of 1938 was reintroduced in 1992, thereby reportedly excluding one third of the population, including ethnic Russian-speaking minorities, from the citizenship of the newly independent State. Since the mid-1990s, about 150,000 people have reportedly been naturalized in a process which remains far from complete (currently about 8 per cent of the population are reported to be stateless). According to information received at the expert consultation, many former Soviet citizens who previously resided legally in the Russian Federation have allegedly been disenfranchised following entry into force in 2002 of the Federal Laws on Russian Citizenship and on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens. 67. In Slovenia, thousands of minority residents, including Bosnians, ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonians, Roma and Serbs were, according to information submitted during the expert consultation, denied citizenship on the basis of restrictive citizenship laws introduced in 1991 and a very short time limit was allowed to file applications for minority non-ethnic Slovenians. The overall legal framework was improved considerably by the Law on Settling of the status of citizens of other Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Successor States in the Republic of Slovenia in 1999, although some minorities, including the Roma, reportedly remain affected. Participants further explained how The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia implemented an extremely restrictive citizenship law after independence, giving rise to a number