Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, has issued a new law that will govern divorce, inheritance and custody of the child for non-Muslims.
This new law comes after the authorities disclosed last year that they would amend the country’s Islamic individual laws which permits unmarried couples to cohabitate, loosen alcohol restrictions and criminalise honour killings -a widely criticised tribal custom in which a male could evade prosecution for assaulting or murdering a female relative whom he considers to have dishonoured the family by her conduct.
The new law which consists of 20 articles introduced the idea of civil marriage and allows wills to be drawn up granting inheritance to whomever a person chooses. The new law also addresses paternity issues.
Abu Dhabi’ s Judicial Department stated that the new law is set to provide a flexible and advanced judicial mechanism for the determination of personal status disputes for non-Muslims.
The Emirate said it would create a new court to handle these cases and the judicial process cum proceeding would be conducted in Arabic and English languages so that easy comprehension of proceeding is achieved by the emirate’s vast foreign worker population.
