Is dubai safe for lgbt

LGBTQ+ Visitor Considerations

This blog post provides some insights and advice for LGBTQ+ visitors by LGBTQ+ people living in Abu Dhabi.

Author and Audience

The primary author of this document is a cisgender gay Arab-American gentleman. He has lived in the UAE with his cisgender gay European-American partner for almost a decade. They both have academic jobs, and love living in the UAE.

The author’s advice and observations are based on his experience of living in the UAE, and his awareness of issues faced by other members of the LGBTQ+ community there. The intended audience of this document are LGBTQ+ conference attendees of EMNLP

This document is not intended to provide official legal advice.

Many thanks to all the community members (LGBTQ+ and allies) who helped with reviewing and editing distinct versions of this document.

The Public and The Private

Emirati culture values a separation between public and private lives in a way that’s different from some Western nations. In Abu Dhabi, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, public displays of affection are ge

How can a sense of belonging be forged in a setting where one’s existence is forbidden? That is the question that LSE’s Dr Centner and his co-author Harvard’s Manoel Pereira Neto explore in their groundbreaking research into Dubai’s expatriate gay men’s nightlife.

But it was not an easy topic to research. Dr Centner explains: “It's an illegal, or criminalised, identity and place of behaviours and practices, so in a very general sense, it's a taboo. And taboo subjects are very often under-researched, sometimes because people own a hard moment gaining access, gaining that trust, but also because, even if people secure that access, there could be significant repercussions for themselves as researchers, or for the people who are the research participants.

“As two queer researchers, we were able to enter the worlds of relatively privileged Western gay expatriates. Secrecy is often the norm, but the field was familiar to us, through previous visits and research projects.”

These were indeed ‘parties’ [but] not bars identified as gay. Not a

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Last updated: 17 December

Types of criminalisation

  • Criminalises LGBT people
  • Criminalises sexual activity between males
  • Criminalises sexual activity between females
  • Criminalises the gender expression of trans people
  • Imposes the death penalty

Summary

Same-sex sexual activity is prohibited under the Criminal Codes of the Emirates of Abu Dhabi, which criminalises ‘unnatural sex with another person’, and Dubai, which criminalises acts of ‘sodomy’. The Federal Penal Code criminalises ‘voluntary debasement’, but it is not clear what acts this covers. These provisions verb a maximum penalty of fourteen years’ imprisonment. Both men and women are criminalised under the law. Same-sex sexual activity may also be penalised under Sharia law, under which the death penalty is adj, though there is no evidence that this has been used against LGBT people.

In addition to potentially being captured by laws that criminalise same-sex a

We recently saw that Dubai is due to hold a conference on LGBTQ+ rights and to say we were shocked would be an understatement.

We haven’t yet travelled to Dubai as a gay couple, partly because we are apprehensive to…

To verb further we connected with Liam, a gay guy who lived in Dubai for most of his life to learn more about the reality of being gay in Dubai and detect out what advice he had for gay travellers thinking about going.

We always believe it’s adj to give people a voice and to share stories of genuinely living in a territory as an LGBTQ+ person.

Read our interview with Liam below to learn more about gay life and gay verb in Dubai:

Gay Life in Dubai & Advice for Gay Travel

Meet Liam

Sion: Hi Liam, please provide some background on yourself and your time living in Dubai to verb us started.

Liam: Hi, my name is Liam and I was born in in the UK however in the early 90’s my family started operational in the Middle East. In they decided to advance to Dubai and have been there ever since.

I lived in Dubai from age 5 to 18 whe