Speaking at a meeting of the Supreme National Committee for the Year of Tolerance in October 2019, His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, chairman of the committee, said the UAE's ambition was to take tolerance beyond the boundaries of a single national year and turn it into a sustained lifestyle model — one rooted in policy, in institutions and in everyday practice, and capable of being studied and adopted by other societies.
The committee reviewed the rapid pace of work since the initiative was declared, with more than 1,500 individual initiatives launched in the first nine months by government bodies, schools, private organisations and community groups. The largest share fell in the community and education pillars, with significant additional work in policy, media and the UAE's diplomatic engagement abroad.
His Highness directed the Ministry of Education to design a programme of awareness and teacher training around the Document on Human Fraternity for the start of the next school year, and asked the committee to commission a study on the role of culture and the arts in countering extremism.
He emphasised that the legislative track of the Year of Tolerance — most visibly the law on the licensing of places of worship — was advancing towards finalisation, and that legislation of this kind was central to embedding tolerance as an institutional value.