More than a fifth of the marriages involving national spouses in the UAE ended up in divorce last year, maintaining the country’s status as having the highest divorce rate in the oil-rich Gulf, official figures showed on Sunday.
Marriages involving local spouses totalled 10,008 last year, including 7,553 national couples, 1,798 native men and foreign women, and 737 local women and foreign men, showed the figures by the National Statistics Bureau.
Excluding foreign couples, divorces totalled 2,181 accounting for nearly 21.6 per cent of the total marriages, the highest divorce rate in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the report showed.
Divorces in mixed marriages were much higher than those in local marriages, accounting for 27.2 per cent in 2010 compared with 19.6 per cent among national spouses. Divorce was highest in marriages involving local husbands and foreign wives, standing at around 32.4 per cent. Divorce was lowest in marriages involving foreign husbands and national wives accounting for 15.1 per cent.
The report showed there were 1,278 divorce cases among expatriate couples but gave no figures on their marriages.
In a recent study, the Emirates Marriage Fund said the UAE had the highest divorce rate in the GCC, which also groups Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. It proposed training courses and other measures to curb divorces.
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