Stateless UAE Nationals, the UAE Government & the United Nations

At a time when the United Arab Emirates is asking for international acceptance, it’s incredible that basic human rights are denied to even the most patriotic citizens. I’m engaged to be married. Only, that marriage may never materialize because my fiancé, like 15,000 others in the UAE, has been made stateless by the UAE government. This is an issue that has been present for decades. And one that multiple promises for solutions have been made, and yet none of those promises have fallen into effect.

According to the United Nations Site http://www.unhcr.org/basics/ a stateless citizen is someone who is without nationality. In the UAE stateless citizens are denied rights such as documentation, medical, education, banking abilities, traveling and even marriage. Without valid identification it is impossible to do literally anything, officially.

A person becomes stateless here for reasons that apply internationally, like parents failing to register their children; or more-or-less locally, like the father’s racial background, regardless of the mother’s nationality. My fiancés mother is a UAE national. His father is Omani. Based on this fact alone, he was ripped of his UAE citizenship.

Legally, there is a 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states, “Everyone has the right to a nationality” and should not be arbitrarily deprived of nationality. My fiancé was once recognized as a UAE national. He carried a passport and a valid driving license. Recently, the government of Sharjah decided to withdraw these rights for all children born to non-local fathers. Upon expiry of such documents, he officially became stateless.

The UAE shames countries like Israel for breaking UN resolutions and committing war crimes against Palestine and Lebanon. The UAE puclically states their mission to the United Nations on this government site, http://www.un.int/uae/. The UAE is in such dire need for nationals in the population ratio that they’re considering nationalizing a slate of people from vastly different cultures, so long as they’ve resided in the UAE for an extended period of time. The UAE claims they want to preserve their culture. The UAE boasts equal rights between men and women. The UAE is fighting to correct all human rights violations for international recognition; the child camel jockeys have been rightfully sent home, the well-known laborer disputes are being highlighted and regulations are being put in place to rectify them. The UAE has given Stateless Citizens like my fiancé, the same promise they’ve been repeating for years, “This year this problem will be solved.”

How hard can it be to grant a person his human rights? How hard can it be to give a national mother the same rights as a national father and thus grant her children UAE nationality? How much culture does a non-national father take from their children even when the mother is national, and the family has resided their entire lives in the Emirates? How hard can it be to reinstate the thousands of unmarried men, women and children in my fiancés shoes their nationality? I can only assume it’s as hard as it was to take it away.

My fiancé and his father have attempting to get these rights back for years now. My fiancés father handed over his Omani nationality years ago in accordance with the UAE law which does not allow dual nationality, in order to receive UAE citizenship which he was granted. He is now stateless as well. My fiancés father has been to some of the highest rulers, and has been given written authority from the ruler’s office that he and his children should be granted nationality. These papers have been forwarded to the Municipality where they’ve been left stagnant for so long they’ve most likely been forgotten.

There are many options for stateless people. One of the biggest obstacles is pure patriotism, and blind faith in a government who has already taken everything away. UAE nationals who still have culture have tight ties with the ruling families and either do not wish to or do not know they can apply for citizenship with other countries, like Canada and the US. They still have faith in the repetitive promises. But soon enough that faith will run out and the UAE will lose more of its culture and gain more international disrespect.

Stateless people can contact http://www.unhcr.org/ whose mission is, “In accordance with article II of the 1961 Convention of Reduction of Statelessness, UNHR provides assistance to helping individuals by helping them resolve their legal problems, obtain relevant documents and eventually restart their lives.” You can get information or declare your case from the UNHCR through email at hqpioo@unhcr.org.

As a Canadian citizen, I fully intend to contact UNHCR and see what can be done for my fiancé and I as years of his family attempting to make way through the local authorities have gotten him nowhere. Should we marry symbolically or religiously without proper registration, his children and grandchildren will still be stateless and without the ability to travel or register anything officially. They will be deemed futureless prior to them even being born. Something has to change and these rights must be reimbursed as quickly as they were taken away.

Should you or someone you know be in a similar situation, I highly suggest you do the same thing. One of the major reasons why other human rights violations in the UAE have been corrected or are in the process of being corrected is thanks to mass international media attention. For the sake of my fiancé, my personal future and others like me, I’m asking you to take a step and do anything you can to give attention to this issue.