Basic HTML Version
Summer 2017
DEFENDERS
49
ODVV Submission to the United Arab Emirates UPR,
29th session of UPR Working group (January 2018)
The main human rights concerns in the UAE include ratification of
international instruments, reprisals against human rights defenders including
heavy prison terms, breaches to freedom of expression including arbitrary
arrests of activists, revoking citizenship, forced disappearances and arbitrary
detentions, torture and mistreatment of detainees, women’s rights, situation
of migrant workers, children’s rights and environmental Rights.
ODVV recommended the UAE government to:
- Ratify 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967
Protocol.
- Implement recommendations by UN human rights experts to protect the
right to freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of association and
peaceful assembly.
- Respect its international human rights obligations and act on
recommendations from United Nations human rights experts to release
activists sentenced to the unfair trial.
- End its continuing use of harassment, arbitrary detention, enforced
disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and unfair trials against
activists, human rights defenders and those critical of the authorities, and its
use of national security as a pretext to crackdown on peaceful activism and
to stifle calls for reform.
- Stop revoking nationality as a punishment
- Release all human rights defenders who are detained as a result of their
human rights work.
- Guarantee the safety and security of all family members of human rights
defenders.
- Guarantee that all human rights defenders in the UAE are able to carry out
their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of
all restrictions including judicial harassment.
- Extend the labor law reforms to cover migrant domestic workers. The state
must implement an appropriate system through which these workers can
speak over the nature of their employment.