Human rights in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are severely restricted. The UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens do not have the right to change their government or form political parties. Activists and academics who criticize the government are detained and imprisoned, and their families are often harassed by the state security apparatus. 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. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) Human Rights Watch, states that Emirati laws maintain capital punishment and discriminate against women, migrants and LGBTQ individuals.
The government restricts freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the local media are censored to prevent criticism of the government, government officials or royal families. As a result, the UAE routinely ranks near the bottom of many international indexes for human rights and press freedom.
Despite being elected to the UN Council, the UAE is not a signatory of many international human rights and labour rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
In November 2020, the UAE overhauled its legal system and enacted a number of reforms, including lowering restrictions on alcohol consumption, permitting cohabitation, imposing harsher sentences for honor killings, and removing corporal punishment as a legal form of punishment in its penal code.
Law and justice Capital punishment
Although authorised, the death penalty is rarely applied in the UAE as the law requires that a panel of three judges agree on the decision of a sentence to death, which can be commuted if the family of the victim forgives the convict or accepts financial compensation for the crime. When a family accepts financial compensation, the court can jail a convict to a minimum of three years and a maximum of seven years.
Execution in the UAE is applied through a firing squad. Before 2020, the law included stoning as a form of punishment due to Sharia law being incorporated in the penal code; there are no reports of the sentence ever being applied.
Sharia law
Sharia is the principal source of Muslim family law. Sharia courts have exclusive jurisdiction to hear family disputes, including matters involving divorce, inheritances, child custody, child abuse and guardianship for Muslims in the UAE. All other laws are based on civil law.
The UAE penal code was updated in 2020 to remove hudud forms of punishmentwhich included flogging and stoningprescribed in Sharia law, allowing only (retribution) and diyas (blood money) sharia provisions. All known sentences that included flogging were issued before 2016. These were for various charges, including verbal abuse impugning sexual honour, adultery, physical abuse, alcohol consumption by Muslims, and extra-marital sex. The sentences ranged from 40 to 200 lashes. The last known stoning sentence is from 2014. All cases handed a stoning sentence were for adultery; none were ever carried out.
Apostasy Apostasy is technically a crime punishable by death in the UAE, but there are no known prosecutions for apostasy.
Family law The Sharia-based personal status law regulates matters such as marriage, divorce and child custody. Sharia courts have exclusive jurisdiction to hear family disputes, including matters involving divorce, inheritances, child custody, child abuse and guardianship of minors. Polygamy is legal for men, and Muslim women must receive permission from male guardian to marry and remarry, and are not allowed to marry non-Muslims. Before 2020, Sharia law was sometimes applied to non-Muslims personal status matters, but the law was changed federally to apply civil family law to non-Muslims. During this time, co-habitation was legalised and a legal process was made for children born outside of wedlock.
Blasphemy Blasphemy of all faiths is illegal since 2015, with punishments of a 5-year prison term, a fine of five-hundred thousand to 2 million dirhams, or both; expats involved in insulting Islam are liable for deportation.
A federal law in the UAE prohibits swearing in WhatsApp and penalises swearing by a $68,061 fine and imprisonment; expats are penalised by deportation. In July 2015, an Australian expat was deported for swearing on Facebook.
Homosexuality and extra-marital sex
In 2020, the penalties for homosexuality and extra-marital sex were altered. Such activity continues to be illegal and offences are punishable by a minimum of 6-months in prison; they are not prosecuted, however, "except on the basis of a complaint from the husband or [male] legal guardian". Any penalty may be suspended if the complaint is waived. Even before this change, there were no known arrests or prosecutions for same-sex sexual activity since at least 2015,US Department of State Country reports on Human Rights Practices: United Arab Emirates; reports for years 2015–2020, prepared by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor:
when, under the previous UAE penal code, the penalty for same-sex or extra-marital sexual activity was between one and fifteen years in prison, and prosecution could proceed at the discretion of police or other authorities.
Authorities have used "public decency" laws as a reason to punish perceived homosexual activity, such as a case in 2017 in which a man was sentenced to three months in prison for touching another man's hip at a bar, apparently in an effort to prevent a drink being spilled. Traditional interpretations of Sharia generally prescribe death as a penalty for sodomy and adultery as zina crimes; while the penal code did not prescribe capital punishment for these offences, courts were permitted to apply sharia provisions as hudud (doctrinal penalties). Article 1 of the new 2020 penal code specifically limits sharia penalties to (retribution) and (blood money) crimes, excluding hudud offences, for which only sentences codified in UAE law may be applied. There has never been a documented case of the death penalty being applied for homosexual activity in the UAE.
Forced disappearances and torture
The UAE runs secret prisons in Yemen where prisoners are forcibly disappeared and tortured. In numerous instances, the UAE government has tortured people in custody (especially expatriate residents and political dissidents). UAE authorities are known to be using torture as a means to extract forced confessions of guilt. UAE escaped the Arab Spring; however, more than 100 Emirati activists were jailed and tortured because they sought reforms. Since 2011, the UAE government has increasingly carried out forced disappearances. Many foreign nationals and Emirati citizens have been arrested and abducted by the state. The UAE government denies these people are being held (to conceal their whereabouts), placing these people outside the protection of the law.
Human Rights Watch considers the reports of forced disappearance and torture in the UAE a grave concern. The Arab Organisation of Human Rights has obtained the testimonies of many defendants. In its report on "forced disappearance and torture in the UAE", victims give evidence that they had been kidnapped, tortured and abused in detention centres. Noted in the report are sixteen different methods of torture applied in the UAE, including severe beatings, threats of electrocution, and denying access to medical care. According to Amnesty International's 2016 annual report on Human Rights, enforced disappearance has been widely practiced in the UAE against citizens and foreign nationals. The international organisation said the UAE government has forcibly disappeared dozens of people for months in secret and unacknowledged detention for interrogation, an action commonly undertaken against people who criticised the government or its allies.
The UAE's human rights issues were discussed by activists and experts present at a conference titled "Arbitrary Detention in the US: Addressing the Crisis of Civil Society Suppression", held during the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Testimonies from individuals affected by the country's legal framework were also featured at the event, where the main focus was on the challenges faced by dissenters and civil society advocates. Concerns around the UAE's human rights records, particularly regarding the "UAE84" mass trial and the suppression of dissent, were previously raised by Volker Türk. He also highlighted the cases of Mohamed al-Mansoori and Ahmed Mansoor, the activists detained for cooperating with the UN. In May 2023, the UAE was called to provide freedom to human rights defenders, but it declined suggestions to safeguard activists and journalists from reprisals.
The UAE's State Security Apparatus (SSA) was established on 10 June 1947. It is a top-level UAE authority on state security matters, which has been mainly involved in the suppression of public dissent in the Emirates. SSA has been continuously violating human rights, including forced disappearances, torture and unlawful detention. On the 50th anniversary of the SSA; MENA Rights Group, the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center, and Human Rights Watch condemned the SSA's violations, and called upon the Emirates to stop its brutal human rights abuses and crackdown on peaceful dissent through false terrorism charges. The human rights organizations appealed the Emirati authorities to align the SSA's legal framework and operations with international human rights standards. They also urged the UAE to hold perpetrators accountable and provide remedies for victims.
In April 2009, a video tape of torture smuggled out of the UAE showed Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods, wooden planks with protruding nails, and running him over repeatedly with a car. In December 2009, Issa appeared in court and proclaimed his innocence. The trial ended on 10 January 2010, when Issa was cleared of the torture of Mohammed Shah Poor. 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. 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".
Presidency of Interpol Major General Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi, a senior UAE policeman, became a controversial candidate for the presidency of international policing body Interpol in 2021. He is alleged to have been ultimately responsible for and complicit in the torture of detainees in the UAE. He is also accused of direct involvement in the torture of two British men, Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad. Despite international opposition, Al-Raisi was elected president of Interpol on 25 November 2021 for a four-year term.
On 1 October 2021, lawyers submitted a complaint to the French Prosecutor in Paris against Al-Raisi for the unlawful detention and torture of Hedges and Ahmad. The complaint against him was made under the principle of universal jurisdiction, allowing the French authorities to investigate and arrest foreign nationals for certain crimes, even if they occurred outside France.