UAE | Endangered Scholars Worldwide

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been marked by a lack of avenues for political expression and an absence of guarantees of civil liberties for many decades. The Freedom in the World 2026 Report by Freedom House categorizes the country as “Not Free” and scores it 18/100. Under the sharia law of the country, women are subjected to systematic discrimination in all aspects of life, and non-heteronormative sexual orientations and gender identities remain criminalized. The political system is a closed autocracy with unelected representatives of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, exercising power that is largely unaccountable to the public through the Federal Supreme Council. The government relies on a powerful police force and a vast intelligence network that are empowered by vague and expansive laws in order to repress alternative voices and the domestic opposition. Arbitrary and indefinite detention of political dissidents, often accused of being “terrorists” or “spies,” is frequent, and those under detention often report having been subjected to torture and other forms of mistreatment such as denial of access to medical treatment.

According to Emirati Activist Jenan al-Marzouqi and Falah Sayed, Human Rights Officer of MENA Rights Group, a Geneva-based non-governmental human rights advocacy organization, there are currently more than 50 political prisoners in the UAE. Amnesty International also noted that 84 Emirati government critics, human rights advocates, and intellectuals, including academics, were targeted with a mass trial in 2023. In March 2025, 53 defendants were sentenced to prison on terms ranging from 10 years to life. In June of that year, the Federal Supreme Court overturned an earlier decision by the Appeals Court to dismiss the cases of 24 defendants, bringing the total number of those imprisoned for life to 67.

Much like other fundamental human rights, academic freedoms in the UAE are severely restricted, with the country scored as 0.20 in V-Dem Institute’s Academic Freedom Index (AFI), which places the country in the bottom 10-20% of all countries in the world. While the state of academic freedom never reached acceptable levels in the UAE, the past decade saw the country’s AFI score fall from the maximum score of 0.21 in 2010 to a historic low of 0.07 in 2021 before recovering to 0.20 in 2025. One reason for this was the broader crackdown on rights and freedoms in the country following the Arab Spring. As part of this crackdown, the Emirati state arrested and tried a large group of jurists, academics, student leaders, journalists, human rights activists, and other civil society leaders who petitioned the government to open the way for more democratic accountability in the functioning of the branches of the government. Among them are Dr. Mohammed Al-Roken, a former professor of constitutional law and lawyer, and Dr. Mohammad Al-Mansoori, a legal expert and jurist. The broad and frequent use of the Counter-terrorism Law passed in 2014, as well as the Cybercrime Law of 2021, has significantly limited the extent to which views can be expressed via newspapers and social media, particularly targeting experts, journalists, and human rights defenders. The free circulation of information remains severely hampered as news outlets reportedly engage in self-censorship to avoid government backlash. Furthermore, those being tried are subjected to unfair and inhumane treatment under detention and during trial, such as physical assault, solitary confinement, denial of access to adequate healthcare, and more.

Repression of dissident voices has also extended to leading academics, as the case of Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith shows, which Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) has been following since the first days of his detention in August, 2015. The prominent economist was detained and later sentenced to prison for posting views critical of the governments of Egypt and the UAE on social media. Throughout his pre-trial detention and during his 10-year sentence that was handed down in 2017, Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith has been subjected to inhumane conditions, which prompted him to launch a hunger strike in protest in 2020. Dr. bin Ghaith is currently in prison, having been sentenced to an additional 15 years in prison in July 2024 as part of the mass trial of human rights advocates and government critics which began in 2023. In another incident, a Ph.D. student from Durham University who was studying the Arab Spring at New York University Abu Dhabi in 2018 was detained by the UAE authorities, subjected to torture, and sentenced to life in prison for espionage charges before he was pardoned following international pressure for his release. More recently, according to Scholars At Risk, on May 22, 2024, a PhD candidate at NYU Abu Dhabi was detained for a week and subsequently deported from the UAE for having worn a keffiyeh and shouted “Free Palestine” during graduation.

In February-March 2026, higher education in the UAE was negatively impacted, this time by geopolitical factors. In early March, all universities were temporarily shifted to online education. After the targeting of Iranian universities by Israel during the US-Israeli war against Iran, on March 28, 2026, Iran announced that it would consider all US- and Israel-linked universities in the Gulf Region legitimate military targets. Following this threat, NYU Abu Dhabi completely shut down its campus, amid fears of military strikes. The campus remained closed for two weeks, and for an additional two weeks, students and faculty were able to access campus on daily entry requests. In late April 2026, the campus returned to regular operations. American University in Dubai also extended its online education precaution through April and until the end of the Spring semester on May 1, 2026.

ESW calls on the United Arab Emirates government to end the persistent human rights violations against Dr. Al-Roken, Dr. Al-Mansoori and Dr. bin Ghaith and others in similar positions who have been unjustly imprisoned for peacefully expressing their views, and calls on the UAE to honor its obligations to uphold human rights under international law and cease the ongoing human rights violations against academics, civil society leaders, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and other political dissidents. We invite the global community to join our call.

(Last Updated: August 19, 2026)

Please send appeals to the following:

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Prime Minister’s Office

PO Box: 212000

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Fax: +971 4 330 404

info@primeminister.ae

Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Minister of Interior

Zayed Sport City, Arab Gulf Street, Near to Shaikh Zayed Mosque

PO Box: 398