Geneva Council for Rights and Liberties (GCRL) will present a report to the UN Human Rights Council next week on the situation of thousands of stateless people in the UAE known as the Bidoon.
The report Council will be presented on the sidelines of the 42nd session of the Human Rights Council, which began on Monday in Geneva and will last for three weeks.
The report addresses the poor conditions of the Bidoons in the UAE and their suffering as a result of the denial of any rights or privileges, including their rights to education, treatment, employment, marriage and ownership, as well as violations of the most basic guaranteed human rights.
The cause of this class dates back to 1971 when the seven emirates united on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. The problem arose after independence and the issuance of the UAE nationality law. The law did not address citizenship applications after this date until the problem worsened and led to a doubling of the number of individuals without any documents or rights, who were called “Bidoons”.
In the first three decades, the UAE authorities dealt with them as citizens because they needed their efforts to serve the country, accepting their employment in the ministries of the state, especially the ministries of interior and defence, as well as accepting their children in government schools.
The UAE government invokes the argument that this group of citizens of other Arab and foreign countries came to the UAE during the late 1960s and early 1970s to work, and hid their passports and identities to take advantage of the privileges of Emiratis.This argument hides the slowdown in solving the problem until it has worsened significantly.
GCRL’s report highlights gross violations against the Bidoons in their most basic rights as preserved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Civil, Political, Economic and Social Rights, making it almost impossible to live for these individuals, especially with violations affecting all sectors of the country.
These include the denial of travel documents, the right to own property and employment, and even treatment, education, birth and death certificates, marriage and divorce contracts.
The Council offers certificates of baboons citizens in the UAE, complaining of the very poor living conditions forced upon them and their families as a result of the obduracy of the UAE authorities to settle their legal status.
All international legal charters recognize the right to a nationality, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
In its report, GCRL calls upon the UAE authorities to change their policies in dealing with individuals listed under the Bidoon category and to grant them the basic rights guaranteed by all international conventions.
The International Human Rights Council also affirms the commitment of the UAE to be fair with all human being within its territory in the right to treatment, education, movement and access to suitable work, and to find an immediate solution and settle the situation of the Bidoon and give them their basic rights.
:Download the report here
