Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates David E. Miller – In Arab society, where family and lineage is paramount, children born out of wedlock with the identity of the father unknown face childhood as an orphan with slim prospects for marriage when they become adults.

But new legislation initiated by the United Arab Emirates’ Social Affairs Ministry aims to tackle the legal confusion regarding responsibilities of their foster families and grants them a monthly stipend of 4,200 dirhams ($1,150). The law also creates government-funded orphanages to be run by a newly established foundation called Tala, which means “little bee” in the local dialect.

The conservative social mores in the Middle East make it too embarrassing for a single mother to maintain any connection with a baby conceived outside of marriage, much less to keep and raise it, so the children are put into orphanages or placed with foster families. But, while small, the number of such children has been growing, straining the resources of the Gulf federation’s resources and threatening social dislocations later on.

According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, about 733 parentless children – strictly speaking they aren’t orphans, as the mother is alive even if she has no contact with her child – live in the UAE. About half live with foster families and the rest in orphanages. To date, there has been no unified policy in the UAE regarding the treatment of these children.

Of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, Sharja is the only one with a specific law concerning the treatment of childless parents.

Adoption is forbidden in Islam, but under a guardianship system, known in Islamic law as kafaleh, children can enter a foster home. They cannot take on the family name of their foster parents, nor can they inherit from them after death. The foster child is also not legally considered a relative, and may marry members of the foster family.

Nevertheless, foster families are considered the preferred option to orphanages, Lara Hussein, chief of child protection at the Gulf office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told The Media Line. Although parentless children face social ostracism, the government has treated them well, she added.

“The childcare system in the UAE is very advanced,” said Hussein. “Here, the country immediately grants these children UAE nationality, which provides them with health care and a social network.”

Indeed, the new law requires foster families and institutions “to implant Islamic morality and principles in the child” as well as “strengthen his national identity and loyalty.”

The problem of out-of-wedlock children isn’t confined to the UAE. Muhammad Shabaneh, head of the family and child directorate in Jordan’s Ministry of Social Development, said cases of children where both parents are unknown are quite rare in the kingdom. “We have less than 40 such cases every year,” he told The Media Line.

But the country’s orphanages and foster families are filled with the children of single mothers. Shabaneh added that his ministry follows the same policy as UNICEF and tries to integrate children into normative families, turning to institutions only as a last resort.

“If the father of the child is found, the child can be returned to his biological parents,” Shabaneh said. “Otherwise, the mother cannot raise him alone for financial and social reasons. In this case, the child will remain in foster care.”

Firyal al-Jarrah, director of the Hussein Orphanage in Irbid, Jordan, said mothers of children born outside of wedlock are often too embarrassed to keep their children. Al-Jarrah added that although society does not generally blame children of unknown parents, they still face difficulties integrating into society.

“Such a child needs to look around a thousand times before he can find a person like him to marry,” she said. “I believe it’s easier for boys of unknown parents to marry than it is for girls.”

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