previous nationality or criminal background.60 39. In 2008, the Ministry of Interior launched a country-wide registration effort for persons without nationality documents which official sources linked to the prospect of naturalisation.61 Those called to register included the Bidoon, those who at some point held a UAE passport but lack proof of any other nationality, and those who had received UAE decrees of naturalisation but lack a family book.62 The registration was introduced as a final opportunity for those groups to present themselves to the Government and be assessed for naturalisation. 40. Unfortunately, the measures taken thereafter have served to mask the problem of statelessness on the UAE territory and to displace responsibility for its resolution. Notably, since 2008, the UAE has been contracting with the Government of the Union of Comoros to issue passports to stateless persons previously vetted as without nationality by the UAE’s Ministry of Interior.63 This arrangement has been found illegal by a committee of the Union of Comoros National Assembly in 2017 but the passports issued under it continue to be renewed.64 41. There has been scarce public acknowledgement of statelessness after the registration drive of 2008. Nevertheless, evidence remains that stateless persons are far from gone from the UAE. Instead, they continue to live in limbo as Comoros passport holders. For example, the records of a June 2010 meeting of the Federal National Council show concern on part of an FNC member from Dubai, Maysa Rashid Ghadeer, over the plight of UAE nationals who do not hold a family book and thus cannot obtain medical treatment. 65 Ms. Ghadeer objected to the inflexible policy of the Emirates Identity Authority (the former name of the ICP) and the Ministry of Interior, in refusing to issue Emirates IDs to persons in this situation, and then mandating that public hospitals only provide treatment to Emirates ID holders. The FNC member from Dubai characterized the situation as one of humanitarian concern which the Ministry of Interior (MoI) was well-positioned to address, seeing as it was the MoI that had in the first place mandated institutions such as public hospitals to only accept Emirates IDs. 42. Those who registered in 2008 were induced and then pressured to obtain Comoros passports in the years that followed, as their health insurance cards and driver’s licenses expired and could not be renewed.66 Eventually, many of those who resisted taking the passport of a country they had never visited were forced to reconsider.67 In international forums, the UAE has asserted that no stateless persons remain in the UAE because the ones that claimed to be were routed through the registration process and allowed to 60 Emirates News Agency-WAM, Bedoons in UAE to be naturalized, (27 December 2006), available at: http://wam.ae/en/details/1395227769304. 61 Emirates News Agency, “MoI sets panel to close file of stateless persons”, (September 3, 2008), available at: http://wam.ae/en/details/1395228180581 and UAEInteract, “7,873 Applications Distributed to Stateless Persons”, (September 8 2008). 62 N. Lori, Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (2019). 63 Z. Albarazi and Y. Kuzmova ‘Trafficking in (Non)-Citizenship in Kuwait and the UAE’ in Roel Meijer, James N Sater and Zahra R Babar (eds), Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge 2020) 349; A. Abrahamian, The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen. New York: Columbia Global Reports, (2015). 64 Union of Comoros National Assembly, Rapport de Synthèse. Rapport de la Commission d’Enquête Parlementaire sur la Loi Relative à la Citoyenneté Economique, (2017), available at : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZkUqAmGYp73oi3plYerBD3BCavg7mu6/view?usp=sharing. 65 United Arab Emirates Federal National Council, Session number [461 / F14 / D] Fourteenth Legislative Semester Fourth Ordinary Session, (2010), p. 74, available at: https://www.almajles.gov.ae/Pages/FNCHome.aspx. 66 A. Zacharias, “Citizenship Hope for UAE’s Stateless,” The National, (July 31 2012), available at: https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/citizenship-hope-for-uae-s-stateless-1.362084. 67 Ibid. 10