The University of Sharjah has inaugurated a Francophonie Center, the first such institution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).​

The center, officially kicked off in 2022, functions as the official portal for the six countries constituting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain.

In a welcome note published in the centre's website, Prof. Rasha Hattab touts the center “as the official portal in the Gulf region for joint legal projects with IDEF."

Prof. Hattab adds: “The centre seeks to establish and activate scientific, academic and research cooperation in the legal field between the University of Sharjah and Arab and Western universities related to the Francophone school."

The center carries joint legal projects with IDEF, the international French legal institute whose aim is to bring together a world community of French-speaking lawyers who can embark on cooperation and exchanges on an egalitarian basis.

Sharjah University's center is affiliated to the College of Law . In the three years since its inception, it has organized a series of seminars and conferences with a bearing on the legal and social aspects of Francophone school.

The IDEF is a multidisciplinary, interprofessional institute whose members are magistrates, professors, lawyers, notaries, and in-house lawyers. Its management committee comprises representatives from member countries that share the French language or civil law legal culture.

To integrate the center with the IDEF, the University of Sharjah has added a special section for Francophone legal studies in its a Journal of Law Sciences to promote research within the framework of the Francophone language.

The center's long-term plan is to issue a scientific journal of its own “devoted to the publication of comparative legal research of a French-language nature", according to Prof. Hattab. The center currently functions as a digital research platform providing researchers with free access to databases “dealing with Francophone and Latin studies."

Through the centre, University of Sharjah's French-speaking academics now have the chance to visit France or French-speaking universities to conduct research and co-supervise postgraduate students.

Among the center's notable partners is the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), an international association grouping over 1000 higher education institutions, networks and scientific research centers that use French in 119 countries.​

The center has organized a series of seminars and conferences with a bearing on the legal and social aspects of Francophone school.