DUBAI: The UAE Ministry of Social Affairs has completed procedures to amend a law that protects the rights of abandoned children, or “children of unknown parentage.”
According to Minister of Social Affairs Mariam Khalfan Al-Roumi, the amended law has been presented to the UAE Cabinet for approval.
With the increase in the number of expatriates in the UAE, the country has also seen an increasing number of newborn babies being abandoned. As a result the ministry is planning to set up an organization that will take care of such children.
Al-Roumi revealed that last year 44 children were abandoned while 17 such cases have been reported in the first nine months of this year. Most of these children are usually left in the parking lots of hospitals, at the doors of mosques or in public parks.
When an abandoned child is found in the UAE, the police handle the case. The child is taken to a public hospital where it is taken care of until the investigation to find its parents is completed. If the child’s parents and its nationality could not be ascertained, then it automatically becomes a UAE citizen and a ward of the state.
The UAE Ministry of Social Affairs then provides a monthly allowance to the child until it reaches adulthood. Because the UAE is an Islamic country, adoption as practiced in Western countries is not recognized. However, a different fostering system is practiced whereas the child can be taken care of by an Emirati family and raised as one of their own.
The child, however, does not carry the foster family’s name; neither is it entitled under Islamic law to inherit the foster parent’s wealth. At the moment only Emirati citizens are allowed to take care of these abandoned children.
