The journey of UAE passport…

The journey of UAE passport started in the 50s of last century. Those days, each emirate had its own document, which was a piece of paper called ‘Barwa’.

Each emirate had a piece of paper with the name and photo of the individual. Each emirate had its own design, and this paper was considered as the travel document for citizens of these emirates.

Later on in the 1960s, each of the seven emirates started having a small booklet. These were in different colours. Some emirates had many colours to differentiate the suburbs and rural areas within the emirate. For example, Ras Al Khaimah had navy-blue, green and red passports. While Sharjah had black, green, and navy blue colours.

With the seven emirates uniting in early 70s and the birth of the United Arab Emirates, the first passport of the UAE was black in colour. Later it changed to navy-blue colour.

An interesting thing about women’s passport at that time was that it did not have the picture of the women. In the box assigned for photos, the words ‘Furdah Female’ would be written. This, however, changed later and women’s pictures were pasted.

The final change to the UAE passport happened when it was made electronic, where each passport has a chip that holds the same information that is printed on the passport’s data page. 

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