Memorialization and Bereavement in Dubai during the COVID-19 pandemic

Keywords: Memorialization and Bereavement, COVID-19, Non-national deceased, Dubai Health Authority
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 62

Abstract

This paper provides an overview analysis of the efforts exerted by Dubai’s city and state government, joining ranks with the UAE’s other official bodies, in devising a creative strategy for dealing with the death and eventually burial of those deceased due to COVID-19 who were residing at the time in its sovereign territory. Such a strategy came at a time of extreme worldwide uncertainty regarding the actual severity of the pandemic, its faster spread, and at a point before the widespread preventive prophylactic by means of vaccine. Dubai’s Burial team devised an official model consisting of 14 steps.

Significantly, Dubai found itself in a rather extraordinary demographic reality, where the share of its non-local population accounts for 92% of the total population, the highest percentage of diverse non-national population in any state worldwide. Those non-locals belong to over 200 nationalities residing in Dubai. It was reported that as of August 2021, the total number of deaths due to COVID-19 in Dubai stood at 2575, including 305 Emirati citizens, almost 12% of the total, which corresponds to ca. 10% of Emirati nationals in Dubai’s population. Thus, almost 90% of the deceased were non-Emirati locals – and the Dubai government COVID-19 teams had to deal with individual each case. Foreign embassy and consulate personnel of those deceased remained indifferent in the early months of the pandemic’s spread to taking any concrete responsibility for their citizens as coronavirus victims, and the burden was placed upon the shoulders of the host government of Dubai.