10 YEARS AGO TODAY, THE UAE GAVE STATELESS PEOPLE HOPE FOR LIFE IN THE LAND THEY LOVE
▶ On September 26, 2008, bidoon were able to register for residency having spent generations living in the Emirates without passports. Anna Zacharias catches up with one community and hears how life has changed for them
In Ras Al Khaimah there was once a neighbourhood known as the Baluchi village, at the base of the mountains. In its plywood huts and old concrete houses, strung with UAE flags that increased with each passing National Day celebration, lived the bidoon.
The word means “without” because they were stateless and without passports. Their families, by chance and circumstance, were not granted citizenship when the UAE formalised its borders on its formation in 1971.
Those who live here hold Comorian passports and speak Arabic. Today marks 10 years since the government began one of its largest efforts to solve the bidoon question.
On September 6, 2008, the Ministry of the Interior formed a committee that would assess the status of all bidoon, with a view to naturalising those eligible for citizenship.
Two days later, thousands travelled to registration centres across the country, anxious and hopeful. More than 7,000 application forms, one for each family, were given out by the end of the first day.
Over the following months, people presented their cases to officials in face-to-face interviews. Official statistics show there are about 10,000 bidoon, although other estimates have been much higher.
That year, the UAE made a deal with the Comoros, an Indian Ocean archipelago and one of the world’s poorest countries, that it would grant passports to the stateless, although it would not extend citizenship or the right to live in the Comoros.
A decade on, much has changed. The bidoon now hold passports of a country that many had never heard of 10 years ago. Minority communities in the Northern Emirates have integrated more closely with Emirati families.
“There are some things that are better,” said Waheed Shaheri, 30, a Comoros passport holder and government employee. “Things changed a lot. Before we could not go out of the country and a passport made a lot of things easier. But some things are hard.”
The situation the bidoon find themselves in is seen across the Middle East and farther afield.
UN refugee agency figures from 2014 estimate there were about 120,000 stateless people in Iraq, many being Faili Kurds.
In Kuwait, the report estimated there were about 90,000 to 140,000 bidoon, most of whom were not given citizenship when the country became independent in 1961. But the UAE and Kuwait are the first to come up with a scheme to grant them passports.
The RAK Baluchi village Mr Shaheri still calls home has almost emptied. Residents moved downtown to a 17-storey high-rise in the city’s Al Nakheel district, known as Burj Al Baluch, the tower of the Baluchis.
At night, neighbours meet beside the parking lot to play the Baluchi game of hashti, throwing wooden sticks on to a patch of stamped earth.
The building is lit by glowing multi-storey portraits of RAK’s Ruler and Crown Prince that shine on to the lot below.
Rent is paid and utilities are provided free by the RAK government, residents say.
Comoros passport holders who approach the RAK Royal Court have their cases fast-tracked to charity organisations who provide medical and financial assistance.
“We went to the Emiri court for help and the sheikhs didn’t cut corners,” said one of the hashti players, a resident who helped to organise the neighbourhood move to the highrise. “The sheikhs arranged everything, for here we are living and here we were born.”
In Abu Dhabi, many bidoon are the descendants of families that migrated between what is now Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE.
In the Northern Emirates, the bidoon mainly originate from the Makran coast, a semi-arid strip in present-day Iran and Pakistan. In a time before borders, travel across the Gulf was common.
Until the mid-2000s, the stateless were granted benefits such as education and health care. They could drive, work, marry Emiratis and buy property.
Their status changed in 2004 when the Emirates Identity Authority was formed and the national ID card project began. Before 2004, those seeking citizenship had to go through their emirate of residence and then the Ministry of the Interior in Abu Dhabi.
From this point, applicants had to go directly to the Ministry of the Interior with a locally issued family book, a document that traces genealogical descent and is owned only by Emirati men and unmarried women over the age of 34.
This federalised the citizenship process and created a new class of bidoon. Those who had held passports but did not have family books lost their claim to citizenship. The family book also became a prerequisite for citizens to get an ID card.
Without a UAE ID, bidoon were no longer eligible for state health care or education. Birth certificates, driving licences, vehicle registration and marriage certificates were available only for documented citizens and residents with visas.
Mr Shaheri’s brother Ahmed came of age during this limbo.
“I couldn’t get work without a passport,” said Ahmed, 26, who was able
Things changed a lot. Before we could not go out of the country and a passport made a lot of things easier. But some things are hard WAHEED SHAHERI Comoros passport holder
to get a government job after obtaining a Comorian passport.
“I couldn’t get a licence without a passport. Those who had work could continue but those without it could not get work. I graduated and I had no work.”
At this point they were advised to apply for Comorian citizenship as a stepping stone to securing documentation. Most in the Baluchi village received Comoros passports by 2012.
“I have this passport but I still don’t understand what this passport is for,” said Mohammed Mahmoud, 27, a government employee whose grandparents were born in the UAE.
“We’re from the UAE and everything we have is here and we were born here, but they cannot give us an Emirates passport. So they give us a Comoros passport.”
Comoros passports removed barriers to integration by enabling bidoon to school children alongside Emiratis and inter-marry again.
Mr Shaheri married an Emirati, which would not have been possible a few years earlier. They have continued to live with his family in the Baluchi village in RAK.
Education opportunities have improved. Parents are again allowed to enrol their children in classes with Emiratis for an annual tuition fee of Dh6,000, a Ministry of Education spokesman said.
Parents such as Mr Shaheri consider this better-quality education essential to maintaining integration. Parents of his generation teach children Emirati Arabic as a first language.
Mr Shaheri’s neighbour, Mustafa Juma’a, speaks Arabic, Baluchi and English to his one and two-year-old daughters. Mr Juma’a feels Arabic is for identity and English is for opportunity.
“English means work anywhere,” he said. “Arabic because we are an Arabic country. We cannot find any benefit for this Baluchi language.”
Their generation appreciate the value of formal education in a way their parents did not. In the past, it was easy to secure jobs without a diploma.
Mr Juma’a, 32, was not pressured to complete secondary school. The former public relations officer, fluent in four languages, has been out of work
since 2016 and struggles without a diploma.
“That company I worked with before, they needed only language,” he said. “Now, people want certificates.”
Not everything has improved with the introduction of passports.
Many bidoon rely on local charities for help with utility bills, wedding costs and health care. These charities co-ordinate with the Emiri courts.
“We have a long list of names,” said Doa’a Alshaabi, a social worker with the Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi Charity Foundation. “First of all, they need education to help their lives. A lot of them marry young and both the wife and the husband are not working.”
Abdul Haikle, a Comoros passport holder who retired from the military in 2007 after decades of service, suffers from pain in his knees but says the operation he requires will cost Dh40,000.
Mr Haikle crossed the Gulf from Makran in the 1960s, aged 13. Now 61, he cannot afford knee surgery.
“Before we had a [health] card and even if we didn’t, we had money,” said his friend, who asked not to be identified. “The difference is before we didn’t pay for residency, for hospitals or schools.”
Most charity cases at the Saif bin Ghobash government hospital in RAK are patients with Comoros passports, hospital social workers said. They receive three or four cases a week.
Buying property presents another obstacle. Comoros passport holders cannot buy land that is available to Emiratis, once an easy process.
Most are on relatively low salaries, earning less than Dh10,000 a month. This makes it difficult to secure loans. In some cases, Emirati friends have bought homes for Comoros passport holders in their names.
The last large-scale registration drive was in July 2012, when the Ministry of Presidential Affairs asked the Emirati Mothers Committee to oversee a programme to determine eligibility for citizenship. The process is ongoing.
“We want so many things for the future that we cannot do,” Mr Juma’a said. “Nothing’s impossible. We will just see. Allah kareem, God is generous.”