Dubai Courts honoured at GovMedia Awards 2025 with three wins

It took home three awards for initiatives that elevate public legal awareness, strengthen family stability, and promote child rights through innovative outreach.

The Dubai Courts received three major accolades at the GovMedia Conference & Awards 2025 for its innovative programmes, initiatives, and law that enhance its community role and offer legal support to the public.

Amongst these is the Happy Family initiative, a pioneering community programme that aims to strengthen family bonds and child rights by delivering legal and social solutions, fortifying family stability through comprehensive educational strategies.

Under this initiative, Dubai Courts has launched digital platforms for family reform sessions, developed specialised psychological training programmes for staff, employed interactive educational tools, produced influential media content through long-standing television and radio programmes, and engaged with anti-bullying associations to advocate for child protection and rights awareness.

It has yielded significant results, including an increase in amicable family dispute settlements to 80% in 2023, reducing judicial referrals to 20%. It has also executed 15 extensive annual awareness programmes via media, educational institutions, and government bodies, and has also produced 352 television episodes over the past three years. The courts have also cooperated with over 25 government agencies to educate employees on family issues.

Moreover, it has reached numerous beneficiaries through seminars, workshops, and partnerships with government and educational entities. It has also promoted family settlement through media campaigns and digital platforms.

This aligns with the UAE government's vision of cultivating a superior quality of life, aiming to buttress family stability by fostering a cohesive legal and social framework. It also underscores Dubai Courts' dedication to strengthening family unity and realising national policies geared towards building a more stable society.

The department scored the United Arab Emirates Social Equity and Inclusion Initiative of the Year - Justice category win for this distinguished government model.

Illustrating child rights law

The Dubai Courts’ supervision of the illustration of Wadeema’s law has also been acclaimed, with the department bagging the United Arab Emirates Campaign of the Year - Justice category.

“Wadeema Children’s Illustrated Law” is an Emirati innovation to enhance children’s awareness of their rights. This initiative is the first of its kind, since it is available in an interactive pictorial and electronic way, in which the chapters and articles stipulated in the original law are represented in drawing, facilitating the process of communicating information to the child in a simple way that helps them discover and know their rights.

The work includes all rights mentioned in the law without deletion or exclusion, and supports what is stated in the legislation regarding its dissemination by appropriate means, “spreading and protecting children’s rights as widely as possible using appropriate means.”

In ensuring the accuracy of the illustrated law, the Development and Intellectual Property Committee of the Dubai Courts also played a role in reviewing the text. Due to its wording and legal nature, it has been made in a simplified language that is graduated to suit the age group, and has also been translated into English.

The project also includes completing the virtual website, designed as a supportive tool to promote legal awareness and introduce children to the law and their rights. This interactive site presents legal chapters as different rooms for children to explore and discover. Its completion aligns with the growing use of modern technologies amongst younger generations and aims to present legal information in an engaging, age-appropriate, and contemporary format.

In collaboration with various government and private entities, Dubai Courts also aims to widely disseminate legal knowledge and broaden its reach.

The initiative has been implemented in 748 schools across the country, benefiting over 250,000 students. It has also been adopted and utilised by more than 25 governmental and international organisations, as well as all public and digital libraries, and has been published across 21 digital platforms.

Developing legal culture and knowledge

Meanwhile, Dubai Courts has also launched “Be Legal," a first-of-its-kind volunteering initiative that spreads legal awareness amongst the local Emirati community by ensuring their access and holding direct and virtual meetings to educate and answer their questions. This programme aims to help people understand their rights and duties, abide by the laws, and avoid actions that could subject them to legal accountability.

“Be Legal” has achieved its objectives, evidenced by a reduction in complaints and inquiries, increased client satisfaction, and enhanced partner satisfaction. Furthermore, community satisfaction with the programme has consistently improved as well, reaching up from 97 % in both 2021 and 2022 to 99 % in 2023.

“By embracing emerging opportunities, this programme ensures continuous progress and enables judicial staff to proactively contribute to community awareness via social media, direct interactions, and strengthened partnerships across diverse sectors,” the courts said.

The initiative won the United Arab Emirates Stakeholder Engagement of the Year - Justice category.

GovMedia Conference & Awards 2025 celebrates the achievements of government projects and initiatives from both government organisations and private sector companies that are not only transforming Asia Pacific, but are also making a significant impact across the globe.

The Gov Media Awards is presented by Gov Media Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2026 awards programme and be recognised for your organisation's government projects and initiatives, please contact Jane Patiag at [email protected].