During the last two hundred years, little change has taken place in family legislation in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf. These countries still rely on uncodified personal status law with only Kuwait and Yemen as exceptions. While Kuwait was the first country in the Gulf to issue legislation on marital relations – law no. 5 of 1961 on marriages between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis – it introduced a comprehensive family code only in 1984. In Yemen, the first code was promulgated in 1974 in what was at that time the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.

In marked contrast to other countri…