Alarm bells raised over the use of citizenship revocation as punishment in the UAE

Although Article 15 of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights (UDHR) states that "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality", citizenship revocation has been used as a punishment in the UAE.

The UAE authorities revoked the nationality of dozens of Emirati peaceful human rights activists along with their families.

Since the beginning of 2016, 15 cases of nationality withdrawal were reported while the total number of Emiratis who were stripped of their nationality has reached 60 individuals.