Attestation confuses almost everyone the first time. Here is the process in plain terms.
Attestation is simply a chain of verification: each authority confirms the one before it, so that a certificate issued in one country is recognised as genuine in another.
For a certificate issued abroad and used in the UAE, the typical chain runs through the issuing country's own education or foreign ministry, then that country's UAE embassy or consulate, and finally the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) once the document is in the country. Each step adds a stamp; skipping one breaks the chain and the document will be rejected at the next step.
For UAE-issued certificates being used abroad, the process runs in the other direction — starting with the relevant UAE authority, then MOFA, then the destination country's embassy in the UAE.
The most common hold-up is a mismatch between the name on the certificate and the name on the current passport, especially after a legal name change or a different transliteration. We check this before starting the chain, since correcting it midway is far slower than catching it at the start.
Processing time varies by country and document type, but budgeting two to three weeks for a full international chain is realistic.