The UAE is to grant citizenship to over 1,000 children of Emirati women married to foreign men, it was announced on Sunday.
“President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan has issued decrees granting citizenship to 1,117 children of UAE women married to foreigners who satisfied requirements for citizenship,” the state-owned WAM news agency said.
The children will be granted full UAE citizenship once they reach 18 years old, the report added.
The Gulf is home to a disproportionate number of expatriate workers, but in the past few children born to a foreign father were not eligible for citizenship in the country of birth. Tunisia was previously the only country to offer gender equality in terms of parents being able to pass citizenship to their children.
Algeria allows women to pass citizenship to their foreign husbands and children, while Morocco and Egypt also allows foreign husbands to apply for local passports.
The issue of citizenship has been a hot topic for debate in the Gulf in recent years. Bahrain expatriates in August called for a review of the country’s citizenship rules in sessions of a national dialogue for reforms in the Gulf kingdom.
Expat workers called on the National Dialogue, a state-appointed body tasked with airing political grievances in the wake of widespread political protests that rocked the Gulf state earlier this year, to review rules relating to citizenship, suggesting the children of longtime residents should receive residency automatically after the age of 18.
Follow us on
