Al Karama, United Arab Emirates

Al Karama (Arabic: الكرامة‎‎) was a proposed planned city to be built on the border of the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It was specified to be the permanent capital of the United Arab Emirates as stated in the Constitution of 1971. The proposed city was never built, and Abu Dhabi became the official capital of the UAE in 1996.

In 1968, the United Kingdom announced that it would end its protectorate over the Trucial States (the predecessor of the UAE), leading the seven rulers of the States to propose a "Federation of Arab Emirates" with nearby Bahrain and Qatar, to be led by a Supreme Council composed of their nine rulers. On October 21, 1969, the fourth and final meeting of the Supreme Council agreed that Abu Dhabi, the largest (in land area) and wealthiest of the nine, should temporarily host the capital of the new state, with a new capital to be built between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. However, this agreement was rendered void when Bahrain and Qatar both withdrew from the proposed federation.

On July 10, 1971, the Trucial States announced the formation of the United Arab Emirates, and the capital issue resurfaced. The five small emirates counter-proposed building a new capital on the border of Dubai and Sharjah, but this was rejected by Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Eventually, the previous compromise was agreed upon, and Article 9 of the final constitution stated:

While the Constitution came into effect on December 2, 1971, its implementation was stalled by ongoing disputes between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and construction of the capital-to-be never got underway. Instead, Abu Dhabi started building the institutions of government on its own territory, ignoring repeated demands from Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah to build the new capital as promised. In 1979, in light of the "facts on the ground" and lacking the resources to build it on their own, these demands were dropped.

A quarter-century after the initial constitution, the Supreme Council of the UAE passed Constitutional Amendment Nr. 1 of 1996, which specified that "Abu Dhabi City is the Capital of the Federation." and thus finally granted full legal recognition of Abu Dhabi as the permanent capital of the United Arab Emirates.

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