To want to go to Abu Dhabi?

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Ok.

Here's the deal. A good friend of mine is living in Abu Dhabi teaching in a primary school and living on a western compound. She wants me to go and stay with her, I'd bloody love to. Thinking of three or four days in February.

Here's the sticking point.

DH is super scared by tales of terrorism, ISIS, threats etc. Currently doesn't want me to take kids to London due to perceived danger.

What are your experiences of Abu Dhabi? Do you consider it to be a dangerous place at the moment? Anyone got some facts I can throw at him?! This isn't a case of him not allowing me to go, I'll pay for myself out of my own money...he just worries, and that comes from a good place. How harsh would I be to just go anyway? To be honest, I'm desperate for a break. I've got two kids, 2 and 5, I work full time...the idea of a kid free few days is just blissful.

I actually visit labour camps as part of my job. I also live in the middle of a giant construction site.

While some labour camps (generally those managed by large western companies) are fairly nice (no worse than Military barracks I've stayed in), some are quite brutal, overcrowded and dirty. I've actually drafted reports that have gotten a couple shut down and one Turkish company banned from working with my company and few others in the future.

My larger issue is with the plight of maids and domestic workers who come here who are raped and abused and the "recruitment agencies" in their home countries that target these people and dump them here with no education and no warning of what they may experience.

I've actually spoken to members of an Abu Dhabi police task force about how to make domestic workers aware of their rights and how to make it easier or less scary for them to go to the police.

In my 11 years in the region I've seen some sad, horrible things. But I've also met and see some amazing things. And I must say that generally the desire to improve and evolve outweighs the bad.

I don't see how I'm helping these people by not being here, or being a key board warrior saving my tourism dollars for more "worthy" places.

Sweetie I work in construction. In the Middle East. As an HSE. What do you do?

Oh but Hysterical, this is MUMSNET, so we're all just housewives sitting on our computers in the Mangroves or Raha Gardens waiting to go to our next mani/pedi or coffee meet.

Agreed on the domestic workers, fatty. I just think there isn't enough official will to do anything to solve the underlying in either case, when the government (I use the term loosely) has ample resources and power to do so.

Well, it's a stereotype, like the idea that anyone who points out the human rights problems in the UAE is a Guardianista keyboard warrior.

I just think there isn't enough official will to do anything to solve the underlying in either case, when the government (I use the term loosely) has ample resources and power to do so.

I think you may underestimate how difficult it is to
A) change long held mindsets in regard to racism (remember slavery was legal here until the 1950's, that mindset doesn't go away over night) and
B) Communicate with people here in general. There are multiple languages, cultures, and education levels. No matter how many times I try and explain a labourer's or maids rights to them, or that they can safely go to the police, they don't understand or they think I'm lying and refuse to go. Unfortunately bad people capitalize on that fear and ignorance. It happens all the time around the world, not just the UAE.

Even I'm guilty of being afraid to involve the police sometimes, even though I know better. Because of the "horror" stories the spread through the expat community.

Things can be backwards here, but I actually believe the general push is towards bettering things.

Fatty I wasn't speaking to you more the armchair warrior who has no effing mideast about the world apart from what she reads in the Guardian and thinks that's enough. Agree about the labour camps, most significantly better than the homes in Bangladesh and safer too. Also agree about housemaids. I saw someone smack theirs round the head in Carrefour the other day. She was a British woman

The problem is where is 'here' from the UAE's POV? Slavery was legal until appallingly recently, yes, but most people in the UAE aren't Emirati, and it's debatable whether even older people still alive have any real sense of being 'Emirati' as such, anyway. With 90% of the population from elsewhere, and even leaving aside the bidoun and associated issues - there isn't a 'home' Emirati culture as such to whose established standards immigrants to the UEA can be directed and expected to conform.

The closest to a sense of identity the country has ever had is the genuine respect virtually everyone had for Sheikh Zayed, but since his death, that goodwill (and communication with local leaders in the absence of anything approaching democracy) has dissipated, and while Emiratis' silence was bought for a long time with government handouts, those have become increasingly centred on Dubai and AD, and the poorer states are developing a real wealth gap and associated problems.

I agree it's a considerable problem to change mindsets, but I think the culture of secrecy, autocracy (visible in terms of government responses to the Arab Spring, support of the Saudi-sponsored crackdown in Bahrain, support for Mubarak right up to the end, among other things), official corruption in high place and minimal residential rights/possibilities of citizenship etc mean that abuses flourish unpunished.

I no longer live there, but staying in touch with people who do and still tracking it via human rights blogs, academic research and the media, it looks to me as if things are getting worse rather than better. The showcase democracy involving a few thousand carefully handpicked citizens is cynical, and the terror threat has given the government a new excuse for illegal arrests.

(And having had a very frightening encounter with the police myself, as a comparatively privileged educated European, I would not blame any maid for being reluctant to go to them.)

Are things getting worse, or are the media reporting things more?

The Guardian teach their enslaved fans that poor countries with horrific abuse.of rights are quaint because they are poor and have dark skin. The Guardian only hate the nasty Arabs because they are rich.

That is so true.

Are things getting worse, or are the media reporting things more?

My impression is that the western press are pretty silent on the UAE these days. At least, I'm not seeing anything much.

The Guardian teach their enslaved fans that poor countries with horrific abuse.of rights are quaint because they are poor and have dark skin. The Guardian only hate the nasty Arabs because they are rich.

That is so true.

What nonsense.

You would need to be fairly ill-informed not to grasp that part of the problem with the UAE's human rights abuses is precisely because it's able to disguise and gain a modicum of international respectability for its regime due to its extreme wealth, whether that's by keeping its own population quiet by state handouts, buying in westerners to work in state-controlled media/security services/ministries westerners who won't rock the boat because they're their for the tax-free salaries or buying legitimacy by getting branches of major international art/education institutions like NYU/the Louvre in. Do you honestly think the Guggenheim/Louvre/NYU (supposedly institutions which support democracy and freedom of expression) just randomly thought 'Ooh, it would be lovely to start a branch in Abu Dhabi?' without enormous financial incentives? They lend major international credibility to an undemocratic regime which is now imprisoning its own citizens for peacefully demanding a gradual transition to democracy and free speech. That's why the UAE's wealth matters to a consideration of its human rights.

When you give the same consideration to other places with regimes far worse I will take you seriously. And if you want to come and spend a week in the Middle East to actually experience it, I will put you up and pay the flight. You can meet all my friends who have lost everything as the result of an illegal and corrupt invasion.

Are you talking to me, Hysterical? I lived in the UAE and Syria, and I have ample experience of both, thanks. The assumption that anyone who points out the problems with the UAE's regime is a suburban armchair warrior with zero knowledge of the region is pretty lazy.

I'm off.

I just don't get why anyone who gets how the world works would focus on one region. I have lived in the oil and gas world for almost 20 years and have seen so much horror. As an HSE I have seen worse and as a human have seen and lost people far more than the ME. Congo and Kenya have no human rights and women, disposable.

And I'm not a total dick. One of the reasons we don't live together is I can't live under my husband. I earn about 4 times what he does but if I were sponsored by him it would be less which is why we live in different Emirates. I miss Doha where we were able to live like normal people. I know this region is not the best for human rights. But it is not the worst. Nor is it, with the exception of Saudi, particularly able to alter world politics so why not just concentrate on the real shit. I try so hard to boycott China but it isn't easy. I do ensure that I don't use products tested on animals and have had to sadly stop buying Burberry since they brought in fur but we can only do what we feel strongly about. I have also paid school fees for many children of people I have worked with from Sri Lanka and India. I feel that I have actually done some stuff. I don't get manicures or have people fanning me. I may earn a lot but I distribute some of it. I take home a good wage and at least 2k goes out on school fees and tractor loans and at least I am actually able to see my affect of the world however small.

Teahornet while I certainly don't think the government here is all butterflies and unicorns in comparison to Doha and Saudi they are quite a lot better. I think a lot of your information and idea of what life is like here is out of date. The other Emirates have been getting a lot of focus (money) lately, especially Fujairah. Hand-outs to the locals have been almost unanimously stopped and the intention is to introduce sales tax and income tax (for locals) in the next few years.

Yes, they do arrest people they suspect of trying to cause opposition to the rulers, but given the power of ISIS and Al Qaeda in this region I don't blame them for doing the EXACT SAME THING the United States does.

I'm not sure I'd say the UAE government is better than Qatar. Better PR advisors and greater censorship yes but the true position? I don't really know and I think it would be pretty hard to say.

I'm interested though, how do you think the treatment of construction workers differs between the two countries. Qatar always seems to be the one getting the press attention, is it really significantly worse? Genuine question.

im finding this thread really interesting