Women of the Revolution: A Vision for Post-war Yemen

 I co-discussed women's role in Yemen, last week, in a webinar organized by the Wilson Center.  

Yemeni Women: Making the Most of the Space Available

(C) Reuters: Sana'a, 2011. 

During my early childhood in Sana’a, in the 1990s, the idea of gender equality was confusing to me. On the one hand, my mother was teaching me how women must fight for their rights. On the other hand, outside of the home, concepts like “gender equality” or “feminism” were portrayed in a negative light. I recall that, in secondary school, our female teacher told our class how “equality” between the sexes was a notion manufactured by the West to destroy Arab and Muslim communities. I also recall how my religious neighbour urged me to accompany her to a women-only Quran study group in the nearby mosque. We would go and listen to a sheikha (female religious leader) explaining how “gender equality” and “feminism” were against Islam, and how Allah wanted men and women to have different and unequal roles and responsibilities.

Raufa Hassan. 

When I started college, however, I became exposed to a different kind of discourse about women’s rights. Both the independent press and events about women’s rights, organised by pro-democracy local civil society organizations (CSOs), opened my eyes to Yemen’s feminist women. Women’s rights advocates in political positions or leading CSOs, such as Radhya Shamsheer, Amat al-Alim Alsoswa, Raufa Hassan, or Amal Basha, speaking eloquently about women’s activism in Yemen, have all been crucial in shaping my feminist consciousness. They were working on issues like child marriage, gender-based violence, discriminatory laws, and women’s political participation, among many other things.


The word feminism, though, was not always explicitly used because it was dangerous and antagonising.

For instance, in 1999, leading feminist figure Raufa Hassan was subjected to an aggressive religious attack over her work and was eventually forced to leave the country. The anti-feminist backlash from some influential religious members of parliament and conservative clerics compelled most feminists to adopt a more pragmatic approach to their activism and to use less antagonising labels, such as women’s empowerment advocates. Only a handful would fearlessly continue to call themselves feminists. They were all involved in the same feminist struggle, to be sure.

Yemen’s modern history has never seen a coherent and consistent women’s movement, but rather temporary and fragmented movements with different priorities, such as women’s struggle against human rights violations, and feminists’ focus on combating patriarchal tribal structures that discriminated against women. They all stemmed from genuine concerns for human rights and democracy.

In the country’s modern history, three major events have influenced these struggles and women’s political rights: 1) the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, 2) Yemen’s uprising in 2011, and 3) the war that has been ongoing since 2015.

When the two Yemeni states unified in 1990, a reform of the family law took place that was considered an advancement for Northern and a setback for Southern women, as the South had already introduced more progressive women’s rights than the North, for instance, legal equality in family affairs.

Then, in the wake of the 2011 uprising, women fought hard for greater and more effective political participation, eventually achieving an unprecedented 30 per cent quota for women in Parliament.


Women also took part in the Constitution Drafting Committee for the first time in the State’s history.



WHERE WOMEN’S POLITICAL RIGHTS STAND TODAY


Yet, today, all these advancements in the name of women’s rights have been eroded. As the four-year-long war rages on, the political system as a whole has descended into chaos and the push for women’s representation has shifted from political institutions to diplomacy and advocacy.

During the time from the Houthis’ takeover of Sana’a in September 2014 to the Saudi-led military intervention in 2015, the formal political process has ground to a halt. Militarisation has meant a significant loss for women’s political voice and role in decision-making. In fact, the discussion of women’s political rights in Yemen right now, in its current apocalyptic state, seems an extravagant thought.

The conflict has made Yemen the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Millions of lives are threatened by famine, but the heaviest toll is taken on women and girls of childbearing age. Females are facing a rise in child marriages and a 63 per cent increase in violence against them. With dozens of women detainees held in Houthi rebel prisons, facing torture and abuse, the conflict has destroyed some of the tribal safeguards that protected women from abduction or imprisonment. In Taiz, women activists are a target of Houthi bullets. Across many cities, women agonise over their missing male relatives and are barely able to feed their starving children.

What I lament the most is that pre-war Yemen, with all its institutional injustices against women, had nevertheless overtaken Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in its advancement of women’s rights – progress that today is basically undone. Over the course of the Yemeni war, women in Saudi Arabia and the UAE have witnessed some positive developments, such as the lifting of the driving ban in Saudi Arabia and an increase in women’s political representation in the UAE, while Yemenis are facing the decline of their rights and freedoms. This is a very important comparison as the disastrous bombing of Yemen is carried out by no other than its neighbours: Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Independent press and CSOs have disappeared as a venue to raise awareness about women’s empowerment. Journalists, activists and aid workers have been harassed, attacked, and/or made to disappear by all warring parties. The space for civil action has shrunk drastically. Voices that dare to speak out in support of women’s rights are effectively being silenced.

WOMEN ARE FIGHTING BACK

Yemen Peace talks in Kuwait, 2016.

Meanwhile, women are pushing back. At the grassroots level, with some 12,000 men arrested and more than 3,000 forcibly disappeared, mothers, sisters, and daughters of those abducted have begun to gather in front of the central prison or police stations across major Yemeni cities in search of their sons, fathers, or brothers. They have organised themselves as a collective named “Mothers of Abductees Association.” At the political level, UN Women has supported the establishment of the Yemeni Women’s Pact for Peace and Security, which calls for women’s inclusion in the political dialogue and peace process.

In addition, Yemeni women’s political activism has been supported by the three UN Special Envoys for Yemen, Jamal Ben Omar, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, and currently Martin Griffiths, over the past eight years. In accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1325 – on the full involvement and equal participation of women in conflict resolution processes – Griffiths has ensured the presence of women in the Yemeni peace talks in Kuwait, Geneva, and Stockholm through consultancy groups.

WOMEN’S FUTURE


Even though Yemen has not witnessed a strong women’s movement in recent history, women have become an important pillar in the formation of a new democratic Yemen since the 2011 uprising. Their activism under the difficult circumstance of continuing conflict has played an important role in shedding light on gross human rights violations and in peace advocacy. The future of Yemeni women depends on the future of Yemen. Women activists will therefore not rest until the country is back on its feet and peace prevails. Within the space available to them, Yemeni women are looking to achieve something that is worth the world’s solidarity.

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*This article was written for and first published in Goethe Institute's website, on April 2019. 

Remembering One of Yemen's Pioneer Women, Raufa Hassan

April - 2018

I wrote for Daraj.com in Arabic about one of Yemen's most remarkable women, late dr. Raufa Hassan, on the seventh anniversary of her passing.

In Yemen, women bear the brunt of a merciless war

Women in #Yemen are celebrating #IWD2018 spending days &
nights at the gas stations queues! via
@@SayaghiX

*While women around the world are today celebrating International Women's Day (IWD), Yemen's women hope simply that it will throw a spotlight on the unspeakable human suffering all genders are enduring across the country.

In fact, to celebrate women's rights today, in an apocalyptic situation like the one in Yemen, seems an extravagant thought. On the ground, women queue for hours in Sanaa to buy gas amid a fuel shortage, and in Taiz, women activists are a target of Houthi bullets. In Aden, women agonise over their missing male relatives, and in Hodeidah they are barely able to feed their starving little children.

Looking back, seven years ago, I wrote from Sanaa's focal point of the protests, dubbed "Change Square", on how women contributed to the anti-Saleh protests, celebrating IWD along with women across the world.

On that day, the women's protest was, to a large extent a political expression, reaffirming their political role in the uprising, and was not a specifically feminist expression.

Different political and anti-Saleh parties used women that day as a decorative tool to serve the parties' political agendas. However, many of the non-partisan and politically independent women, as I was myself, believed that bringing about a drastic political change would benefit women's rights in one way or another.

However, little did we know how the tide would turn, and how the brutal civil war to come would lead women to become this vulnerable.

Yemen has been ravaged by a vicious cycle of violence since mid-2014, impacting everyone, regardless of social class or gender, but the problems women, in particular, are facing continue to accumulate.

When I began working as a reporter at the Yemen Observer in Sanaa in 2008, I was assigned the women's issues beat. I was reporting on the high maternal mortality rate in the country, the epidemic of child marriage and the battle to legally ban it and violence against women.

The more I reported, the more I realised that - contrary to the stereotypes - the tribal culture in Yemen sees women as the backbone of the family and community across the country. That culture ensures their fair treatment.

Nonetheless, following Yemen's 1990 failed unification between the north and south, and the interference of political religious powers in the nation-building process, these factors have put women's rights at a disadvantage.

Women's biggest problems used to be the institutionalised gender discrimination and socioeconomic hardships as a result of Yemen's longstanding poor governance.

Today, however, their biggest problem is war. As Yemen has been ravaged by famine, cholera and bombardment, yesterday's problems seem like the good old days.

Nevertheless, most concerning to me is the vanishing state of justice in Yemen.

One UN report details how Yemen as a state has dissolved.

In Yemen before the war, in that relatively peaceful and stable country, gender equality was at the heart of the women's rights struggle.

Back then, Yemen's personal status law contained provisions that discriminate against women in relation to marriage, divorce, custody of children, and inheritance.

Today, in war-torn Yemen, the conflict has led the entire judicial system to collapse. There is no one solid, functioning judicial system in Yemen today. The country is on the verge of partition between north and south, and there is no coherent functioning judicial system ruling over both parts.

The Houthis in the north have forcefully and illegally controlled the judicial system and are committing serious human rights violations. Asmaa al-Omeissy, for example, was sentenced to death on charges of "terrorism". Meanwhile, in the south, extrajudicial killings have tragically become the norm in a climate of armed militiamen, with no justice ever being served to its victims.

In this grim situation, the country's women are one of the most neglected political groups. While they bear the brunt of the war, many are still manging political activism that needs our solidarity.

The "Mothers of Abductees Association", is doing great work, raising their voice against oppression and injustice. And to enhance Yemeni women's political representation in any potential peace talks, a group of Yemeni women under the name "Yemeni Women Peace Pact" supported by UN Women has been working since 2015 to enforce women's inclusion in peace talks.

With the recent appointment of a new UN special envoy Martin Griffiths, there's hope that international peace efforts in Yemen will take on a gender perspective, a demand Yemeni women peace activists outline in a letter to be sent to Griffiths today.

________________________________________________________

*This article was writtern for and firstly published on The New Arab website, March 8th 2018. 

Yemen's women make their voices heard from revolution to constitution

Photo: Hani Mohammed/AP

"Yemeni women are some of the fiercest women I have ever met. Through conflicts and famine, many have had to struggle for the survival of their families. The abject poverty afflicts Yemeni women in particularly harsh ways, yet they carry on and persevere. Still, their pride in their culture and love for their beautiful country always shines through. But in spite all of this I was still surprised when I saw footage of the protests that rocked the capital Sana’a in 2011." - Amina Semlali  Read more

Yemeni Women Rock

 

"Yemeni Women Rock!" writes Yemen Times' editor in chief, Nadia Al-Sakkaf on her latest achievement in receiving the Business for Peace Award. 

Nadia Does Rock! ♥

Yemen youth take action

My first contribution piece to FreeArabs.com

*

Past generations of Yemenis have watched as their country descended the ladder of gender equality. Luckily, Yemen’s young activists are stepping up and speaking out.

From left to right, Diala Haidar, FarahBarqawi and Yalda Jounes, the co-founders of TUWAW's Facebook page and international movement. 

“The Uprising of Women in the Arab World” (TUWAW) Facebook page has accrued over 100,000 followers since its inception in October of 2011. The page invites users to follow trending activism issues and engage in international dialogue concerning topics relevant to Arab women.

While I know the page is regularly updated by posts from around the world, it shocked me to learn that the highest number of contributions came from Yemen – a country long accustomed to the murky bottom of the discrimination-ranking Gender Index. Considering how limited Internet access is in Yemen, the feat deserves extra plaudits. Apparently Yemen is pushing back against the gender inequalities that make it difficult for women’s success. Co-founders of TUWAW’s Facebook page and international movement, Yalda Jounes, Diala Haidar and Farah Barqawi, confirmed the incredible Yemeni response during a Women Bloggers Conference in Morocco last week. They noted that most of the posts come from a surprisingly wise pool of Yemeni youth. The posts by these youngsters adroitly reflect on the serious social grievances Yemeni women endure, including child marriage and sexual harassment.

This is what founders like Farah Barqawi hoped the page would encourage. “The idea of the page and blog,” she said, “came with the Arab Uprisings… with the awareness that women and men in the Arab World were missing rights and freedoms.” The page would, she and her co-conspirators believed, provide the perfect forum for women (and men) to lobby for bigger steps toward gender equality. While the uprisings were a good start, “revolutions,” Barqawi stated, “are either complete with women or [aren’t] at all.”

It’s this idea that’s caught on with TUWAW’s followers. Those posting from Yemen seem to have fully embraced the notion that a total liberation for a nation won't happen if half of its population is oppressed. The dissemination of this concept is particularly important in a country like Yemen, which is often characterized by its ultra-conservative mores. Luckily, we can see some changes taking shape there – changes I never imagined I’d see.

One instance occurred in March of 2013 when a women's rights activist, Renad Mohammed, managed to hang a massive, feminist, political poster in the heart of Sana’a city for a week. The poster showed women’s rights activist Ala'a al-Eryani holding the following statement: “I'm with the Uprising of Women in the Arab World because I won't stop demanding my rights.” It was an unprecedented step that brought women’s rights issues directly to the people.

Additionally, Mohammed organized and held a seminar on women's rights issues in Yemen, to mark International Women's Day. The idea, she admitted, was inspired by the TUWAW Facebook page. The seminar was a complete success and even attracted the attention of BBC Arabic, which reported on the event. Hopefully Yemen's law-makers were listening as well. 

While TUWAW is getting the message out to youth activists around the Arab World, its themes seem to resonate particularly strongly with intrepid young activists in Yemen. What the Yemeni bloggers, Facebook users, and organizers are showing is that women’s rights and Yemeni activism are both alive and strong.

Yemen women divided over rights fight

Source, Aljazeera.com

Aden, Yemen - Before Yemen's unification and the bloody civil war that followed, women in the southern port city of Aden say they were educated professionals with rights not experienced by those in the conservative north. Yemen's unification in 1990 curbed those rights. Southern women were laid off from their jobs en masse, and gender discrimination took firm hold when former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's victorious regime rolled into Aden four years later.

This year, Yemeni women hold a 30 percent quota of the 565 seats in the ongoing National Dialogue talks in Sanaa. Brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states during the 2011 revolution, the talks are intended to address outstanding grievances, including women's rights.

Three Women Voices in Yemen's National Dialogue Conference

While observing Yemen's national dialogue conference from distance, the view seems blurry and inconstant. Nonetheless, few speeches by prominent speakers give impression that there is a determination to continue the struggle in demanding social justice and rights no matter what.

Among the various crucial topics the conference aims to address, women's issues are on the spot. Accordingly, female participants -who hold 30% of the overall seats in the conference- made sure that they voice out fundamental rights.


Women's rights advocate, Balqees al-Lahabi speaks about women's challenge to be in the public, "a woman needs quota because she still can't enter the decision-making platforms just like how she can't enter public spaces. In the same way you, politicians, set quotas for yourselves, we demand a quota for us, women, too," she says.

Award-wining human rights defender and chairperson of Sisters' Arab Forum for Human Rights,

Yemeni women continue to fight for rights

What International Mainstream Media Doesn't Show about Women in Yemen

If you just google "Yemeni women" or/and observe contents on international media about women in Yemen, you'd definitely get pictures of Yemeni women covering their whole bodies and wearing black in black; only showing their eyes and hands. Since there is a tendency to portrait Yemeni women in a certain pattern in the international media as very conservative and influenced by how women in KSA usually wear the black abaya, this post is dedicated to dispel that myth.

Almost %60 of Yemen's population lives in rural areas where women know nothing about that black abayas. The dress code is as colorful as it gets.

In the capital city of Yemen, Sana'a, women's dress code in the public is very diverse. However, I lament how international media outlets only portrait half of the picture; disseminating pictures of the conservative ones like above and the other side of women's dress code like the ones below are neglected.

This is a report done by a Yemeni TV channel about a group of women's celebration on the International Women's Day, last 8th March. Notice, no international media bothered to report about them.

A Bleak Future for Yemen’s Female Leaders

My op-ed for al-Akhbar news website about the current plight for female opinion leaders in Yemen, published in Dec. 10th, 2012.

*****

The participation of Yemeni women in the country’s uprising fascinated the world early last year. Yet the uprising also represented simultaneous opportunity and danger for women, especially female opinion leaders.

An opportunity because women had the chance to be empowered. For instance, their parliamentary participation quota is under consideration to be increased from 15 to 30 percent. A danger because of the risk looming over them and the high price they would have to pay for their audacious political stances.

Various factors shape the risks facing women. In a conservative and tribal society like Yemen, the idea of women in leadership roles has always been a problematic issue in the country’s contemporary history. For those women who dare to lead, they face virtual wars as they confront media slander and physical attacks from their opponents.

The women I’m referring to are the ones who carry the heavy burden of defending women’s rights. They were fortunate enough to enjoy a number of privileges and stick out in a country where nearly 67 percent of females suffer from illiteracy.

A number of fortunate women in Yemen have chosen to be active in advocating for human and women’s rights. Typical of a patriarchal society, these women are on the margins of the political stage, their real function is to provide a relatively stable participatory stage for influential figures to take part in decision-making. These women are not only deprived from decision-making power, but also face an increase in aggression for their political stances.

One such woman is outspoken writer Bushra al-Maqtari, who has actively participated in protests and spoken against the atrocities committed during former president Saleh’s regime.

In January 2012, Maqtari wrote a piece that could’ve led to her death. She has graphically described in her writings the savagery that took place in her birthplace and current residence of Taiz province. In that piece, she boldly wondered why God has disappointed the people of Taiz when they were bombarded by gunshots during the ‘Life March,’ a 260-kilometer procession from Taiz to Sanaa on 20 December 2011.

The piece spread like wildfire, and not long ago, conservative Islamist groups headed by the Islah party defamed her and called for her murder. In Taiz’s Freedom Square, members of the party mobilized protesters to march to her home and kill her. Several women of Islah beat Maqtari when she visited the square afterwards.


During a televised interview in Septmeber 2011, the Islamist MP, Sheikh Mohammed al-Hazmi lashed out at Maqtari. He said that a fatwa calling for death would be issued against anyone who blasphemes, including Maqtari.
Maqtari doesn’t live in her house anymore; she has sought protection at her relatives’ homes. In August 2012, she filed a complaint with Yemen’s attorney general over the defamation campaigns waged against her in hopes of receiving an official consideration. Thankfully, she’s alright, but the danger still awaits.

Atiaf Alwazir, a Yemeni-American researcher and activist, has been one of the faces of Yemen’s uprising. She is a citizen journalist disseminating the latest on Yemen’s political and humanitarian situations in the international media. She has raised pressing concerns about the impact of the CIA’s drone strikes against Yemeni civilians.

Just like many other female intellectuals, Alwazir was the target of an online propaganda campaign, led by a male journalist who opposed her political opinions. She was called a traitor and a western spy. Even for a woman respected by many, the attacks against her reputation caused harm.

Hostility against women’s rights advocates has a long history in Yemen. For instance, in 1974, a group of Islamists took over and shut down the Yemeni Women’s Association in Sanaa, which offered basic literary lessons, craftwork training, and radio broadcast training. The association remained closed until it was reopened in 1979 by the late activist Raufa Hassan who, back then, was accused of being westernized and subsequently harassed and threatened by Islamist groups.

And this is only a partial list.

The situation for male opinion leaders is hardly better than that of females. Several men have been targeted, such as Abdelaziz al-Saqqaf who was killed in a 1996 car “accident.” Journalist Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani was imprisoned for several months in 2007 for his critical writings against the military. Journalist Abdelelah Shaye was one of the first journalists to report on the CIA’s civilian-killing drone strikes and accordingly, he has been behind bars since 2010. Journalist Nabeel Subaye openly criticized Ahmed Saleh, son of former president Saleh and commander of the Yemeni Republican Guard, and then faced an online propaganda campaign, attacks on his car and house, and death threats.
Again, the list goes on.

I specifically address the targeting of female opinion leaders because even though female activists played a major role during the revolution, many do not want to continue in these leading roles. The women facing harassment are independent thinkers, closer to the youth movement than traditional political parties. Their struggle is not only to fight marginalization, but also to fight the defamation and threats.

Another crucial reason for my focus on females is the potential for a domino effect. If one female leader is terrorized, then other emerging female leaders could become silent. It’s a distressing reality given the fact that there are no laws or big women’s rights organizations that can defend them. Lawlessness in Yemen harms everyone. However, we feminists can only survive by sticking up for each other and breaking the silence.