Nobody who read the story about the group of 10 Abu Dhabi children, including one aged 8, living in squalor and deprivation could fail to have been shocked. The revulsion is not just about their dire situation but also about of the powerlessness of the authorities to intervene.
As The National reported yesterday, the children were fending for themselves under the care of the oldest, a 24-year-old who suffers from an unspecified mental illness. Social services are aware of the group of 10 living in rubbish-littered rooms that reeked of urine and faeces in an outdoor section of their father's home.
This case serves as a grim example of why Federal National Council member Dr Mona Al Bahar is calling for a proposed comprehensive child protection legislation to more quickly become law. The law has been mooted since 2012, when an eight-year-old Emirati girl was tortured to death by her father and stepmother. A younger sister was also tortured. Both perpetrators were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The case – and in particular the authorities’s powerlessness to remove children, even when they were known to be at risk – served as a catalyst for society to reconsider the balance between a family’s right to privacy and a child’s right to be raised in a safe environment. The Child Safety law, which includes the power to take children from the families if circumstances warrant it, was recommended by the FNC for consideration by the Cabinet but has yet to become law.
The delay in enacting the law provides an opportunity for social services agencies to be ready for the powers that will be put in their hands. This includes establishing foster homes to minimise the additional trauma of abused children being removed from their parents. The best solution for everyone is for the problems that led to the children’s removal being resolved so that families can be united. Often this is not an easy task and the potential for permanent foster placement must also be an option, raising a new set of issues about finding suitable Emirati foster carers and establishing the legal framework for such an arrangement.
The ultimate goal is that our society should never again be shocked by a case of child abuse of this kind.