Children's shelter planned in Dubai

A children's shelter is to be set up in Dubai to rehabilitate abused and abandoned children, said women behind the project.

Sharla Musabih, one of the women active in the project who is a women and children's rights activist, said she hoped the shelter could be set up by January.

"Right now the papers are being processed to get recognition for the shelter," she said.

A deposit has already been paid for a villa that will take in children who have nowhere else to go.

Dubai does not have a specialised centre for such children. Musabih has raised the need for a children's centre through this newspaper.

Gulf News was unable to obtain any independent figures of abandoned or abused children in Dubai.

The women behind the shelter also expect to take in child camel jockeys who have run away or have been abandoned by their owners after outgrowing their usefulness.

Gulf News recently highlighted the plight of child camel jockeys when a rehabilitation centre for victims of the trade was announced.

That centre will be run by the UAE Government and a Pakistani non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Musabih said other children also needed assistance even if their cases did not receive the same publicity.

"Children who find themselves in abusive situations have nowhere to go," she said.

She cited the case of Khalifa, 13, who lives in her house.

Gulf News previously interviewed the boy, who speaks English, Arabic and Urdu, languages learnt from friends behind a shopping centre where he used to play soccer.

Khalifa said his parents abandoned him in Satwa when he was 3. Police have told him he comes from Oman. "I was taken to a police station in Bur Dubai and then to Al Quoz," he said.

Khalifa can neither read nor write and said he spends most of his time "sitting around".

He was taken to live in Sharjah with a family, where he claims some of the family members treated him badly.

He claimed that his stay there was a difficult period for him. He pointed to scars across his neck and arms. "I ran away back to the Bur Dubai police station," he said.

Musabih was told of his case by a police officer.

"Khalifa has scars from torture. He's 13 years old and nobody protected him. This will be a shelter for children like him," she said.

Musabih said the shelter will have specialists to rehabilitate the children.

"Some of them have had really challenging, difficult lives," she said.

She said some children would stay there permanently until their legal situations had been resolved.

"This isn't just a place for children to go while their legal status is being sorted out. It's to rehabilitate them as well, to give them hope that the future can be better," Musabih said.

Many of the children she had worked with, Musabih said, had no legal status at all.

Another woman involved in the project said they expect to see children "coming out of the woodwork" when the shelter is established.

"I expect it will be like the women's shelter. Nobody expected the shelter would be at full capacity, which it is. As soon as word got around, women came out of the woodwork," she said.

Musabih and her friends keep children in their homes for want of a safer place to be.

They include Khalifa and another child no more than 4 years old, Abdul Qayoum, who was found in a Dubai hospital after apparently sustaining injuries while riding a camel.

• The children's shelter to be set up in Dubai will rehabilitate abused and abandoned children.
• The shelter is being set up by a group of women who are also women and children's rights activists.
• The centre, when established in January, will be run by the UAE Government and a Pakistani non-governmental organisation.
• The organisers of the shelter hope to rehabilitate child camel jockeys who have run away or have been abandoned by their owners after they outlive their usefulness.
• The women have already taken a villa that will function as the shelter. The papers are being processed to get recognition for the shelter.