Before the DFWC was set up, a Dubai resident, Sharla Musabih, took it upon herself to provide care and legal assistance to women and their children who were the victims of domestic violence and trafficking. According to Musabih, an American convert to Islam who is married to a UAE national, she was eventually silenced when she was "taken over" by the much bigger, government-licensed DFWC.

From 1991 Musabih took women and children into her home and eventually earned a reputation as a tough operator, and received some support from the authorities. In 2001 she set up the first independent shelter in Dubai, accommodating up to 60 women and children, and named it the City of Hope.  But it would appear that Musabih was too outspoken about the lack of attention to the human rights abuses of women and children and the influx of women trafficked into prostitution.

"People were so offended by these women coming and they didn't know what was going on," she says. After 9/11 ,she found that things became much harder for her as an American working in Dubai. "My work was never difficult before the Iraq war, but from then on there was a seething resentment for anything or anybody remotely Western. All of sudden I was no longer one of them. I had been living there for 25 years on their terms, but it was just over."

Musabih became increasingly unpopular. The local press ran scathing articles about her, suggesting that her style was too indiscreet and informal, and that she opposed the UAE's customs and traditions. In 2006 Sheikh Ahmad Al Kubaisi, a prominent Iraqi Sunni scholar and TV commentator who lives in Dubai, accused her of encouraging women to rebel against their husbands. "If every woman hit by her husband is encouraged to rebel, the sanctity of marriage would disappear from society."

The following year Musabih was contacted by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He told her he planned to set up a foundation for women and children, and he wanted her to be centrally involved. But she told him she could not put her name to a government iniative. "My interest lies with the victim and your interest lies with policy and diplomacy."

Eventually it was agreed that the foundation would be a semi-government organisation. But Musabih was never to work there. While she was on holiday with her family, the organisers emptied City of Hope of all 60 women and children and moved them to the new foundation. "I allowed them to do it because I had been led to believe that I would be running it."

The media campaign against Musibah continued until she decided to leave her husband and six children and return to the US. "I left because of the smear campaign," she says. "The US consulate called me and said, ‘You're not safe, you need to leave'."

Rori Donaghy is the coordinator of the Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR), a tiny organisation based in London. Donaghy believes that the UAE are effectively "whitewashing" the problem of violence towards women and children rather than genuinely tackling it. "They can open a refuge, and even send female ambassadors to international human rights conventions to make it appear as though they are committed to ending discrimination, but it's all a veneer."