Sexual Violence
Para 44) In November 2019, the United Arab Emirates adopted a family protection policy, one of the goals of which is to protect children against all forms of sexual violence. The policy also contains protection and intervention mechanisms, including a reporting and complaints system, frontline prevention procedures and the establishment of family protection centres. The competent State institutions have established child protection centres to tackle all forms of abuse against children. For example, the Ministry of Education has opened a free telephone hotline to report cases of abuse and violence against children. Moreover the Ministry, under Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2016, has set up an oversight unit as part of its own structure which has the task of conducting visits to all educational institutions in the country, throughout the year. The unit has a number of tools at its disposal to achieve its task and has imposed penalties on educational institutions that fail to comply with the required standards. A total of 111 ministerial functionaries have been granted the status of judicial officials in order to increase their authority and enable them to deal immediately with cases where children are being abused, neglected, harmed, subjected to violence, deprived of their right to education or subjected to sexual harassment or assault. At the international level, the United Arab Emirates is a member of the WeProtect Global Alliance, which is a coalition of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations that seeks to develop policies and find solutions to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse.