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29 March 2024

Dubai authorities end ordeal of child left without ID

Authorities decided to exempt the mother from paying four-year overstay fees for her five-year-old daughter. (Emarat Al Youm)

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By Staff

Dubai’s authorities have again stepped into the breach to end a four-year ordeal of a little girl by contacting the president of her country to get her a new passport after it was seized by her father who left the UAE.

Reacting to pleas by her helpless mother, authorities also decided to exempt the mother from paying four-year overstay fees for her five-year-old daughter.

According to the general administration for human rights, the girl’s father left the UAE after taking all his daughter’s ID documents to take revenge against his ex-wife after she won a legal battle in Dubai to take custody of her daughter.

When the mother tried to get her a new passport, she was told by her country’s consulate in Dubai that the law bans issuing such a document when a person already has a valid passport. The mother said her girl was deprived from health services because she did not have a passport, adding that she decided to resort to Dubai’s police four years later because she was unable to register her daughter in school.

“The mother had resorted to mediation by many relatives and friends to persuade her ex-husband to send back his daughter’s passport but he adamantly rejected all these efforts,” the Administration’s director Brigadier Mohammed Al Murr said.

“She then decided to resort to us…we tried to get the girl a new passport through her consulate in Dubai but we could not…we then decided to go through diplomatic channels to end the ordeal of the mother and her daughter.”

Quoted by Emarat Al Youm daily, director of the woman and child protection division at the Administration Major Isac Al Mazmi said the department sent a letter to the foreign ministry, which in turn sent it to the president of that country.

“The letter explained the problem facing the woman and her daughter…the letter was immediately considered by that country’s president, who issued an exceptional decision to have a passport issued immediately for the girl,” he said.

“After we received the girl’s passport, we sent it to the general administration for residency and foreigners’ affairs, which issued a visa for the girl on her mother’s sponsorship and exempted the girl from all overstay fees for the past four years.”