Egypt has set up a number of overseas committees to issue and renew national identification cards for expatriates abroad, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

This means that Egyptians living in some countries will not need to return home to update their official documents. The move will also make it easier for Egyptian nationals living abroad to obtain or renew the recently introduced machine-readable passports, the ministry said.

The committees are currently operating at Egyptian embassies and consulates in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut, Paris, Los Angles and Seattle. Committees will be available in Jeddah, Washington DC, and New York starting next week and in Kuwait City in September.

An estimated 13-14 million Egyptians live abroad, with the majority in Gulf countries, according to comments by Immigration Minister Nabila Makram earlier this year.

The country’s official statistics agency CAPMAS put the number at 9.5 million in its 2017 census.