ABU DHABI // Roya Hassan's fate will be sealed on Nov 4. The first woman to graduate in law from Al Ain's United Arab Emirates University in 1982, she says she has never been able to practise because she is a "bidoon", one of an estimated 10,000 stateless people living in the UAE without passports or other legal documentation.
A week on Tuesday she will be interviewed by officials from the Government's Citizenship Committee, who will decide whether she can become an Emirati citizen.
Her father moved to Ras al Khaimah from Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, in 1953. Fresh out of military service with the equivalent of Dh650 in savings, considered "good money for that time", Hassan Ibrahim Hassan came in search of adventure.
"It was not difficult for them in Tabriz," says Mrs Hassan. "They just wanted a challenge. A few of the boys wanted to leave the place and they had friends here who encouraged them to come."
In Ras al Khaimah, "there were no shops, no houses, no food", she says, "and at first, there was no work. They had a little jar that they used to collect any money they could gather from odd jobs that would come to them. But the people here were so kind. They took care of them. The hospitality was so good. They were always opening their homes and sharing their food."
Mr Hassan met a carpenter in RAK and entered into an apprenticeship. After six years he moved to Khor Fakkan, in Sharjah, where he opened his own carpentry shop and went on to raise four children with his wife, a fellow Iranian he had met in RAK.
"He was the most famous carpenter in the whole area," says Mrs Hassan. "Everyone knew him, everyone was constantly inviting him over for a coffee, a tea, a meal."
Mr Hassan, who at 78 works as a watchman at a centre for handicapped children in Kalba, was given a Sharjah passport in 1971, but when the UAE was formed at the end of that year, he was instead reissued with a temporary UAE passport, which he had to renew every six months.
The rules changed in 1982 - the year his daughter graduated. Since then, Mr Hassan has not been able to get a passport for himself, his wife or his children, as they are not in possession of the required UAE national birth registration certificate. "We were Emirati citizens until 1982," says his daughter. "We were able to travel.
"Do I belong here? I was born here. I studied here, I grew up here, I made all my friends here, I went to their homes and they came to mine, they were like my sisters. I used to jump from house to house and wall to wall to get to their homes and I was known as the monkey of the neighbourhood. "Of course I belong here, this is my home."
After graduating from law ahead of the other female students who started with her, Mrs Hassan fought hard for the right to practise her chosen subject.
"I tried to work in law?many of my friends in Fujairah tried to help me and pull some strings, but it didn't work. Instead, I worked in the legal departments of a lot of different companies, but it wasn't the same. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be in court."
It was not to be.
"Imagine studying and working so hard for something, even struggling to be allowed to go to law school, and dreaming of it, then you simply can't do the job you have studied for," she says.
Mrs Hassan's younger sister managed to get papers from the Iranian embassy, which in 1989 enabled her to leave for Canada, where she works as a journalist.
"She did not have the patience to wait," says Mrs Hassan. "Although we are very comfortable here, we are still facing so many problems due to a lack of official papers and a passport. We can't travel, we can't easily change our jobs, we have difficulties registering a car, or buying property, or opening a bank account, even. Nothing comes easy for us."
Mrs Hassan, 46, frustrated with working in legal departments, had a stint in newspapers and radio, before joining Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies, a part of the Mubadala Development Company, where she has been working for the past 20 years.
"The most important thing in my life right now is to get this passport," she says. It would enable her to travel if she needed medical treatment overseas, or to visit her two sons - one of whom is Bayan, the guitarist in the Abu Dhabi-based rock group Juliana Down - if they chose to live abroad.
Most importantly, she could finally fulfil her lifelong ambition.
"I am definitely planning to continue my studies," she says. "I want to get my master's and PhD degrees, that's what I'm hoping for.
"Then depending on what opportunities come up, I will either practise law or teach law in the university. This is the dream I am living for."
kattwood@thenational.ae
hkalaf@thenational.ae
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As You Were
Liam Gallagher
(Warner Bros)
Sinopharm vaccine explained
The Sinopharm vaccine was created using techniques that have been around for decades.
“This is an inactivated vaccine. Simply what it means is that the virus is taken, cultured and inactivated," said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, chair of the UAE's National Covid-19 Clinical Management Committee.
"What is left is a skeleton of the virus so it looks like a virus, but it is not live."
This is then injected into the body.
"The body will recognise it and form antibodies but because it is inactive, we will need more than one dose. The body will not develop immunity with one dose," she said.
"You have to be exposed more than one time to what we call the antigen."
The vaccine should offer protection for at least months, but no one knows how long beyond that.
Dr Al Kaabi said early vaccine volunteers in China were given shots last spring and still have antibodies today.
“Since it is inactivated, it will not last forever," she said.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
