Dear colleagues of The Kanoo Group,
The word "unity" has become cheap currency in our fractured world. Leaders invoke it while their nations splinter. Governments preach it while betraying their people's trust. It appears in speeches and on banners, a hollow promise that rings emptier with each repetition.
We see this theater of false unity everywhere. Countries torn by conflict wrap themselves in the language of togetherness even as their citizens flee across borders. Politicians who sow division by day call for unity by night.
The word has been so abused, so thoroughly stripped of meaning, that many have stopped believing unity is possible at all.
But I have seen what real unity looks like. I have lived it.
As we approach the UAE's 54th Union Day in 2025, I find myself reflecting not on the celebrations themselves, but on what this small nation has quietly proven about what holds people together. The official theme this year is "United"—a simple word that here carries weight because it rests on something solid.
Real unity is not the absence of difference. It is not everyone thinking the same thoughts or sharing the same background. The UAE is home to people from over 200 nationalities. Walk through any neighborhood in Dubai or Abu Dhabi and you will hear a dozen languages, see a dozen ways of dress, encounter people whose grandparents never knew the other's land existed.
What binds them is not sameness. It is something harder won and more valuable: a shared commitment to building rather than destroying, to progress rather than grievance, to the future rather than the past.
At The Kanoo Group, where I serve as your Chairman, we have embodied this principle for generations. Our company is a mirror of the nation we serve—people from different countries, different faiths, different traditions, all working toward common goals. We do not pretend our differences do not exist. We speak one language not because we have erased our native tongues, but because we have chosen to speak the language of peace, progress, and mutual respect.
This is the unity the world needs now. Not the forced conformity that comes from the barrel of a gun or the tyranny of a single ideology. Not the paper-thin solidarity that dissolves at the first sign of hardship. But the deep, resilient bond that comes from choosing each other, day after day, despite our differences.
History reminds us today of that seven emirates that gathered to plan what we celebrate now as Union Day. It was not a gathering of identical people nodding in agreement. It was a meeting of distinct communities, each with its own character and concerns, working together to honor what they have built in common. That is unity in practice, not in propaganda.
The world today is not short on division. We see governments betraying their people's trust. We count the lost lives in conflicts that serve no one's interest. We hear the cries of those yearning for peace but finding only more violence. Against this backdrop, the word "unity" can sound like a cruel joke.
But it does not have to be. Unity is possible, but only when we stop treating it as a slogan and start building it as a practice. It requires leaders who serve rather than rule. It demands citizens who see beyond their own narrow interests. It needs institutions that are fair and laws that protect everyone, not just the powerful.
Most of all, it requires hope—not the naive hope that ignores problems, but the stubborn hope that believes we can solve them together.
The UAE, in its 54 years of union, it has shown that people of vastly different backgrounds can not only coexist but thrive together. It has demonstrated that diversity need not be a weakness and that progress need not come at the cost of tradition.
As we prepare to celebrate Union Day, I invite the world to look not at our festivities but at our example.
Unity is not achieved through speeches. It is built through schools that educate every child, through businesses that offer opportunity to all, through communities that welcome the stranger, through leaders who keep their promises.
The cultural and social bonds that connect everyone who calls the UAE home did not appear by magic. They were forged through deliberate choice, hard work, and a collective decision to build something better than what existed before.
This is what unity really means. Not the exploitation of a word by those who have no intention of honoring its meaning, but the daily practice of choosing cooperation over conflict, understanding over ignorance, building over destroying.
The world is divided. But it does not have to stay that way. We can choose differently. We can speak the language of peace and progress. We can show what it means to be truly united.
The question is not whether unity is possible.
The question is whether we are brave enough to build it.
Your truly.
Your Chairman
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