Widad Samawi is a woman with a mission – to encourage Emiratis to marry and urge local couples to try and rescue failing marriages in a country where just one in seven is a UAE native.
This is because she also believes that getting married and staying married is a way of preserving national identity in the UAE.
Marriage in the Emirate, with its majority expatriate population and myriad cultures, is key to keeping the national identity alive, according to the Abu Dhabi Campaign for Social Cohesion, in which Samawi is a leading light.
"The UAE is now a global country," said Samawi, Chief Executive of Al Tawasel Centre for Training and Consultancy, which is co-organiser of the campaign along with several government bodies.
"But there is always a need for the family to safeguard the country's fundamentals so that its culture does not melt into the cultures of others," she said.
"The marriage campaign is to protect the identity of our society," said Samawi, clad in a traditional black abaya (full-length robe) and a white-beige headscarf.
Emiratis represent about just 15 per cent of a population estimated at about 6.4 million.
Government officials and commentators have voiced concern about this influx of foreigners whose cultures some see as a threat to local traditions, urging a solution to the "demographic imbalance". "We have a mix of cultures with about 200 nationalities in the UAE, and we co-exist in peace," said Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan at a conference on national identity last year.
"However, this mix should not affect our national identity."
Dwindling birth rates, rising divorce levels and – until recently – growing numbers of expats have prompted the state to pursue an aggressive policy of promoting marriage among UAE citizens.
However, one in four marriages resulted in divorce in the UAE last year, with 42 per cent of the cases involving couples in the 20-30 age group, according to studies cited by Tawasel.
"The idea of the campaign was born out of the reality we saw," said Samawi. "We have noted an increase in the number of marriage consultations concerning couples with disagreements, especially over the past three years with the opening up of society," she said.
"The increase in the number of expatriates and the multiplicity of cultures is a healthy matter. However, we have to take only what is appropriate for us to preserve our identity."
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