UAE Cabinet to consider 'Wadeema's Law'

A draft law is due to be submitted to the UAE Cabinet that lays out strict penalties for child abuse and negligence.

National news agency WAM said the Technical Committee for Legislations at the Ministry of Social Affairs debated the law, which will be forwarded to the Cabinet.

The law includes instructions from Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who wants strict penalties to prevent negligence or injury to children in light of the case of eight-year-old physically abused girl Wadiyma.

The ministry said the law is drawn from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a human rights treaty setting out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children, which the UAE ratified in 1995.

The tougher penalties and other proposed amendments will be discussed by the Ministry of Interior during this week before the draft law is sent to the Cabinet.

Wadiyma’s decomposed body was found buried in the desert last month. Dubai Police believe it had been there for three months.

Her father and his lover have been arrested on suspicion of torturing her to death and also abusing her seven-year-old sister, Meyra.

Last week, Dubai's most senior prosecutor, Eissam Issa Al Humaidan, the Attorney General, has called on the courts to hand down the death sentence on Wadiyma’s father, Hamad Saod Juma Al Sherawi, 29.

Al Sherawi and his 27-year-old lover Al Anood Mohammad Al Ameri are accused of pouring boiling water over the girls and burning them with a clothes iron, as well as beating them.

Al Sherawi allegedly told the police he did it to discipline them. Meyra told police that Wadiyma collapsed as they were torturing her in March and died.

Al Sherawi and Al Ameri are accused of burying her body in the desert to hide their crime.

No date has yet been set for their trial.