Laws do not tolerate domestic violence

Abu Dhabi: Violence against women is a scourge that does not know caste or creed, religion or colour, a senior official said.

"But in the UAE domestic violence in general and violence against women in particular does not raise its ugly head as frequently as elsewhere in the world," said Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Al Hosani, director of the Community Policing Department at the Abu Dhabi Police.

"Violence against women is not a phenomenon in the UAE because UAE laws do not tolerate it and great effort is made to curb it, which resulted in the decrease in the number of incidents," he said.

Al Hosani maintained that the community service centres of the Abu Dhabi Police educate people on how to cope with violence and their awareness is raised.

These centres also encourage women to report any violence against them and not to suffer in silence, according to him.

The community centres, he said, also coach and mentor schoolchildren to help them grow into healthy young men and women.

"We also have zero tolerance to youngsters becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol, which are responsible for violence."

No official figures

There are no official figures on the level of domestic violence in the UAE. However, a recent study showed that two-thirds of residents in the country have been the victims of violence or verbal attacks. While women are the ones who are hurt the most, the majority of the cases occur in the home.

The study, by Dr Mohammad Abdullah Al Mutawa, Professor in Sociology at UAE University, showed that 66.2 per cent of respondents had been physically or verbally assaulted by their families, at school, by peers or authorities.

The study surveyed 269 university students: 237 UAE nationals, 12 from Gulf countries, 16 from other Arab countries and 4 from non-Arab countries.

It found that 33.5 per cent of respondents, ages 18 to 30, had been assaulted by their families. Women were abused more often than men because families tended to tolerate mistakes by men.

Nearly 40 per cent of female respondents and 28.8 per cent of male respondents said they had been victims of some form of violence in the family.