Death certificate attestation for the UAE

Most people reading this have a funeral to arrange or a family abroad waiting, so here is the short version first. UAE MoFA charges AED 150 to attest a death certificate. It must be the original. If the certificate was issued in the UAE, it goes to the Ministry of Health and Prevention or the local health authority, then to UAE MoFA, then to whichever mission the destination country names — its own embassy here, or the UAE mission there. And UAE MoFA accepts death-certificate attestation requests by phone, on +971 800 44444. For an urgent death certificate needed to transport the body outside the UAE, MoFA’s FAQ says to call +971 800 44444 to coordinate the attestation.

You do not have to do this yourself. MoFA’s FAQ says anyone can submit the application on the document owner’s behalf, so a relative or a colleague can submit while you deal with everything else.

When an attested death certificate is required

Attestation makes the certificate usable outside the country that issued it. On its own a death certificate is only recognised by the authorities of the place it was issued in. Once UAE MoFA and the relevant embassy have stamped it, other governments and institutions will accept it as genuine.

In practice families need it for five things:

• Repatriation of remains, where the receiving country or the airline asks for the certificate. For an urgent death certificate needed to transport the body outside the UAE, MoFA’s FAQ says to call +971 800 44444 to coordinate the attestation. Beyond that, we are not going to set out a repatriation procedure here: there is no published federal checklist we can source, and the requirements differ by nationality and by emirate. Ask the hospital and the embassy of the person’s nationality what they need, and take the document list from them rather than from any website.
• Closing UAE bank accounts and settling balances held in the UAE.
• Estate and inheritance matters abroad, where a foreign court, registry or notary needs proof of the death that it can rely on.
• Pension and insurance claims, which usually require an attested original rather than a copy, and often more than one.
• Re-registering the death in the person’s home country, so that national records, civil registries and identity documents are updated.

Several of these can run at the same time. Nothing in the attestation chain has to wait for the others to finish, so there is no reason to hold it back while the rest is being arranged.

Which direction is your certificate travelling?

This is the first question, because the two chains are different and doing the wrong one costs a full cycle.

A UAE-issued death certificate needed abroad is the more common case: someone died in the UAE and their family, their bank, their insurer or their home country’s registry needs the certificate. A foreign death certificate needed in the UAE is less common but happens — a relative died abroad and the certificate is needed to close a UAE account, release an asset held here, or support a claim in a UAE court.

Taking a UAE death certificate abroad

The outbound chain has three stages, and it differs from the inbound one in two ways that surprise people.

First, there is no foreign-ministry step before UAE MoFA, because UAE MoFA is the foreign ministry. It attests the seal of the UAE entity that issued the certificate directly. UAE MoFA’s own rule is that original documents must be attested by the governing entity first, with digital documents issued or electronically attested by a government entity as the exception. MoFA’s example (for a birth certificate) is MOHAP or the local health authority; the same applies to death certificates issued by those bodies.

Second, the destination country decides who finishes the chain, and UAE MoFA will not do it. The UAE is not a contracting party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so no UAE authority can put an apostille on anything. Where the destination country wants a consular stamp, that stamp comes from its own embassy or consulate in the UAE. UAE MoFA states the position plainly: if the destination country requires additional attestation by its embassy or consulate in the UAE, that step is yours to arrange separately.

When you apply, UAE MoFA asks you to choose between attestation by the ministry only, and attestation by the ministry followed by attestation by the relevant UAE embassy or consulate. Which one is right depends on where the certificate is going, so find out what the receiving institution needs before you pay.

MoFA says the destination country and the completion option cannot be changed after submission. If the family has not decided where the certificate will be used, skip the MOHAP bundle and attest later through the MoFA website.

The AED 300 route, and exactly what it covers

MoFA publishes this AED 300 total for birth and death certificates. Where a death certificate is issued through the MOHAP or Emirates Health Services digital channel, attestation is bundled at issuance for AED 300 in total: AED 150 for UAE MoFA and AED 150 for the UAE embassy in the destination country.

Read the second half of that carefully. The AED 150 embassy leg is the UAE’s own mission in the destination country — the route used when the certificate is going to be presented to a UAE embassy abroad. It is not the fee for the destination country’s embassy here in the UAE. That mission sets its own fee, UAE MoFA does not publish it, and neither will we.

UAE MoFA says birth and death certificates coming through the MOHAP channel are processed “within a few minutes and without human intervention”. For UAE-issued digital documents generally it publishes a turnaround of within 2 hours during official working hours. A digital document here means a real one: a PDF carrying a QR code, barcode, electronic link or reference number, not password-protected. A scan or a photograph of a paper certificate is not a digital document, and you do not get to choose the route — UAE MoFA’s website decides whether an application goes down the digital or the courier path.

The phone route, and what UAE MoFA does and does not say about it

UAE MoFA lists four official channels: its website, which needs a UAE PASS login; the UAE MOFA smart app; UAE embassies and consulates abroad; and phone assistance on +971 800 44444 for People of Determination, senior Emiratis and senior residents. Alongside that phone line it states that death-certificate attestation requests are also accepted by phone.

MoFA names death certificates specifically for this. It means a family without a UAE PASS login, or without anyone able to sit with a portal, is not stuck.

Be clear about the limits, though. UAE MoFA publishes that requests are accepted by phone. It does not publish how payment is taken on that route, how the original certificate then reaches the ministry, or how it comes back. Ask about all three on the call, and expect to arrange a courier for the physical document. For an urgent death certificate needed to transport the body outside the UAE, MoFA’s FAQ says to call +971 800 44444 to coordinate the attestation. MoFA’s attestation FAQ says its Customer Happiness Centres are closed. Apply through the official website or UAE MOFA app and follow the assigned digital or courier route. Call 80044444 for service guidance.

A death certificate issued abroad, for use in the UAE

This is the ordinary inbound chain and it works the same way as it does for any other personal document. Pre-authentication in the country of issue, then that country’s foreign ministry, then the UAE mission there, then UAE MoFA. The fee at UAE MoFA is the same AED 150: MoFA’s FAQ lists death certificates among personal documents at AED 150, for documents issued inside and outside the UAE.

Where the mission runs the combined service, the UAE mission stage and the UAE MoFA stage are a single application. The mission pages put it as “one service, two attestations”. As at 27 September 2026, MoFA mission pages publish this combined service for New Delhi (which also handles Bhutan-issued documents), Mumbai, Islamabad, London (which also handles Iceland-issued documents), Dhaka, Canberra, Colombo, Kathmandu, Pretoria and Beirut, among others. We found no current MoFA page for Karachi or Cairo; confirm with the mission. The home-country foreign ministry stage is still required and is not part of the combined service. For a certificate issued abroad, MoFA’s service page says processing through a UAE mission may take up to 15 business days. We found no current mission attestation page on mofa.gov.ae for the UAE Embassy in Manila as of 27 September 2026, so confirm with the embassy whether UAE MoFA is a separate stage for Philippine certificates.

An apostille on its own does not work for the UAE. It is insufficient rather than useless: in the UK the FCDO legalisation, which is an apostille, is exactly what the UAE Embassy in London requires before it will act, while in India and Pakistan the opposite applies and the foreign ministry must issue its ordinary attestation instead.

Where the certificate comes from, and what has to happen before the foreign ministry

The UAE half of the chain is close to identical everywhere. The home-country half decides your cost and your timeline. These four routes name death certificates specifically in the issuing country’s own published rules.

Pakistan is the honest gap here. MoFA Pakistan states that documents issued by NADRA go directly to it with no intermediate step, and lists birth certificates, marriage registration certificates and FRC/CRC records by name. The death certificate is not in that published list, so we will not tell you the route is identical. Confirm it with MoFA Pakistan or the UAE Embassy in Islamabad before you send anything. When checked (23 August 2026), MoFA Pakistan stated that it charges no fee for any type of attestation, only the prescribed revenue stamps. The UAE stage is the Islamabad combined application (time not published).

Whichever country it is, the certificate goes to the UAE mission covering the country that issued it, not the country the person held a passport from and not where the family lives. The UAE Embassy in New Delhi states: “Documents that are not issued in the Republic of India must be attested by the UAE Embassy or Consulate in their country of issuance.”

Why death certificate attestations get rejected

A rejection is expensive in time rather than money. UAE MoFA applications cannot be amended or reopened, so a rejected one is replaced by a new one. The attestation fee is refunded automatically within 14 working days; the delivery fee is not refunded at all. MoFA’s service page now says refund eligibility follows its refund procedures.

Translation: when it is needed, and where it sits

Translate after attestation, not before. UAE MoFA’s requirement is an “original document in English or Arabic (or an official translation of it)”, so an English-language certificate needs no translation for the chain itself, and an Arabic UAE certificate needs none either.

Arabic becomes necessary at the point of use — UAE courts, notaries public, banks and most government submissions — and the same logic applies in reverse when a UAE certificate written in Arabic reaches an institution abroad that reads only English. The reason to translate afterwards is mechanical: each stage of the chain adds stamps and sticker text, so a translation made first contains none of them and usually has to be redone.

Inside the UAE the translator should be registered with the Ministry of Justice, which operates a “Registration of Legal Translator” service and maintains a register of experts and legal translators. The wider industry position that only MoJ-registered translators’ work is accepted by UAE courts and government entities is stated consistently but we could not source it to a published MoJ rule, so treat it as the safe assumption rather than a quoted requirement.

Egypt is the genuine exception. The Egyptian foreign ministry attests translations itself, in-country, through a short list of approved bodies including the Ministry of Justice, the Armed Forces Language Institute, Civil Status and government universities, and charges its fee on the original and the translation separately. If a translation is used, Egypt’s MFA lists Civil Status as the body that endorses translations of civil-status certificates; the receiving UAE body decides whether it wants one.

Before you start

• Confirm which country the certificate has to be used in, and ask that institution whether it wants attestation, translation, or both
• Work out how many attested originals you need — banks, insurers and registries often keep the copy they are given
• Check the name of the deceased on the certificate against the passport, character for character
• Make sure the certificate is an original, unlaminated, and carries the seal of the authority that issued it
• For an outbound certificate, ask the destination country's embassy in the UAE what it charges and what it needs, before you pay UAE MoFA