Human rights in the United Arab Emirates

[1] There are reports of forced disappearances of foreign nationals and Emirati citizens, who have been abducted, illegally detained and tortured in undisclosed locations, and denied the right to a speedy trial or access to counsel during investigations by the UAE government.

[61] The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, expressed "concern" over the case and raised it with the UAE President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, during his 2013 state visit to Britain.

[66] Human Rights Watch criticised the trial and called on the government to establish an independent body to investigate allegations of abuse by UAE security personnel and other persons of authority.

[67] The US State Department expressed concern over the verdict and said all members of Emirati society "must stand equal before the law" and called for a careful review of the decision to ensure that the demands of justice are fully met in this case.

In February 2015, Human Rights Watch documented a case in which three Emirati sisters, Asma, Mariam, and Al Yazzyah al-Suweidi, were forcibly disappeared by Emirates authorities.

[78] On 9 July 2020, reports claimed that the UAE authorities declined requests from human rights organisations to provide information about an Omani man, Abdullah al-Shaamsi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2020 after a seriously unfair trial.

[82] On 1 October 2021, lawyers submitted a complaint to the French Prosecutor in Paris against Major General Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi for the unlawful detention and torture of two British men, Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad.

Ahead of his arrival, Mathew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad, who faced extensive torture in the UAE, called for the Scottish police to follow up the case and open a separate investigation.

During February 2022 visit of Prince William to the UAE for Dubai Expo 2020, Hood was "violently attacked" by four Emirati prison guards after he punched the wall of his jail cell out of "frustration".

She was arrested and charged with "breaching the privacy of government employees", stemming from an incident during Lar's arrival at Dubai airport, where she and her travelling companions were kept by immigration officials in a room for six hours without explanation.

Family members believed that Long, an ambulance paramedic, and former soldier who had served tours in Iraq and Bosnia, working closely with bomb disposal units, was affected by a drone strike in Abu Dhabi in January 2022, triggering his mental collapse.

[97] In August 2024, two brothers from Ohio, Joseph and Josua Lorenzo, were sentenced to 4 months in Dubai prison over allegations of alcohol consumption, resisting arrest, assaulting an officer and damaging a patrol vehicle.

According to the report, a prominent economist, academic and human rights defender Dr Nasser bin Ghaith was sentenced to 10 years in jail by the Federal Appeal Court in Abu Dhabi.

He was charged with insulting the state's symbols and criticising Egypt, Israel and Gulf countries through comments he made on Facebook during Israeli military operations in Gaza in 2014, before he moved to the UAE.

Ten days after preventing him to travel to Jordan for his wife and children on 3 December 2015, UAE authorities summoned al-Najjar to a police station in Abu Dhabi and detained him.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Director of Human Rights Watch said, "If the UAE were truly committed to its rhetoric of tolerance, it would not have ripped Najjar away from his wife and children for years-old innocuous Facebook posts.

Accordingly, on 17 March 2014, the activist Osama al-Najjar who is a 28-year-old son of Hussain, was sentenced to three years in prison after sending tweets to the Minister of Interior expressing concern about his father who had been ill-treated in jail.

However, campaigners and a close colleague of Siddiq's have demanded the British police thoroughly investigate the incident, claiming that the activist's "life was at risk all the time", Khalid Ibrahim, executive-director of the GCHR.

On 25 March 2024, an Egyptian national was also interrogated by the UAE security officials over social media posts, in which he criticized Arab and Islamic negligence to the famine eruption in the Gaza during Ramadan, and called for an end to normalization of ties with Israel.

In July 2016, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain released a report accusing UAE government of enacting further laws to restrict the freedom of political and social expression.

[156] In December 2019, the US intelligence identified that the UAE, which banned VoIP options on several applications, developed its own messaging and video calling app ToTok and has been using it as a spying tool.

[f] According to some organisations, more than 4,000 Shia expats have been deported from the UAE[168][169] The lack of religious freedom in China has led to Uyghur Muslims fleeing the country to take refuge in other parts of the world.

[176] On 24 March 2022, a senior British judge concluded that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum inflicted 'exorbitant' domestic abuse on his ex-wife Princess Haya bint Hussein.

[196][197] Abortion in the United Arab Emirates is only legal in cases of rape, incest, if the continuity of the pregnancy would endanger the woman's life, the foetus' deformation is proven, or after approval of a regulatory committee.

[237] A report released by the Human Rights Watch in November 2020 cited that hundreds of Sudanese migrant workers were tricked into fighting alongside the UAE-backed forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar in the Libya civil war.

[245][246] According to the Ansar Burney Trust (ABT), an illegal sex industry thrives in the emirates, where a large number of the workers are victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, especially in Dubai.

The government of the UAE has worked with law enforcement officials to build capacity and awareness through holding training workshops and implementing monitoring systems to report human rights violations.

[255] Announcing the ban, Sheikh Hamdan made it very clear that "no-one would be permitted to ride camels in camel-races unless they had a minimum weight of 45 kg (99 lb), and are not less than 15 years old, as stated in their passports".

[256] The Ansar Burney Trust,[257] which was featured heavily in the HBO documentary, announced in 2005 that the government of the UAE began actively enforcing a ban on child camel jockeys, and that the issue "may finally be resolved".