Aqeel: Warns of a new "Houthi" women's organization targeting women human rights defenders in Yemen

On Mohammed: The continuing conflict in Yemen is affecting the status of women in Houthi-controlled areas

aMaat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights issued a new report entitled “Women of Yemen on the Edge of the Abyss,” on the sidelines of the celebration of International Women's Day. The report deals with the patterns of violations and abuses that Yemeni women are subjected to since the beginning of the conflict in Yemen until the present time, especially in areas under the control of a group The Houthis, where the Houthi militia committed multiple crimes against Yemeni women, these violations varied between direct targeting and random shooting, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and the loss of the lives of a large number of women due to landmines, as well as the impact of the current conflict in Yemen on the future of girls. Especially in light of the exit of about 2 million Yemeni children from the educational process, a number that is likely to increase to 5 and a half million in the event of a lack of funding for the educational process in Yemen and in light of the targeting of educational facilities and staff.

Today marks March 8, 2021, the occasion to celebrate International Women's Day, which was celebrated by the United Nations for the first time on March 8, 1975 during the celebration of the International Year of Women and two years later, and in December 1977, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 32/142 on March 8. Every year as an international day to celebrate women's rights, the theme of this year's celebration is "Women in the leadership ranks to achieve equality in light of the emerging coronavirus pandemic."

The report indicated that Yemen suffers from gender inequality, which is indicated by international indicators. Yemen ranked last in the global gender gap index, which was developed by the World Economic Forum for thirteen years in a row. Through this report, Maat Foundation shed light on the status of Yemeni women in the context of the armed conflict that approached the seventh year in a row, and the disproportionate impact of this conflict on the rights of civilians in general, and Yemeni women in particular, who have been subjected to patterns of violations and abuses in the current conflict, especially in the areas under the rule of the Houthi group, and have borne the brunt of this The abuse alone is what made Yemen the worst country to live for for women.

The Maat Foundation report documented these violations that Yemeni women were subjected to since the beginning of the conflict until the present time, and these violations were divided between direct killing using indiscriminate shelling and live bullets on civilians, and the report documented nearly 4 thousand 300 violations during the period from March 2015 until October 2020 In Sanaa and other areas under the control of the Houthis by force of arms. These violations varied between 1,500 deaths and 2,800 injuries to women as a result of artillery shelling, injury to anti-personnel mines and sniping by armed elements of the Houthis, as well as indiscriminate firing of live bullets.

In this context, Ayman Aqil, President of the Foundation, affirmed that the continuation of the conflict in Yemen exposes more than three and a half million women in Yemen to the risk of violence, and Aqeel explained that Yemeni women in the areas under Houthi control have borne the brunt of countless violations, and these violations varied between detention. Extrajudicial, enforced disappearance and torture in prisons run by the Houthis. Moreover, Aqeel explained that the Houthis are still recruiting women in the areas under their control in order to tighten their grip on the opposition and women human rights defenders. Aqeel stated that the Houthis intend to recruit 2000 women in a new organization called “Al-Fatimiyyat” similar to the Zainabat organization that commits the most heinous crimes against women .

In this context, Ayman Aqeel welcomed the UN Security Council Resolution No. 2564, adopted by the Council on February 25, 2021, to include the sanctions imposed by Resolution No. 2140 of 2014 for Sultan Zaben, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department in Sana'a, who leads the organization of Zainabat. It is an intelligence apparatus that the Houthi group has enlisted for acts of intimidation, intimidation and targeting of Yemeni women detained in prisons in areas under their control, including sexual violence, severe beatings and forcing them to adopt crimes that these women did not commit.

Ali Muhammad, a researcher at Maat Foundation, said that refugee women in Yemen have borne the brunt of the conflict more than others, and are subjected to all forms of torture, sexual violence and other forms of cruel and degrading treatment at the hands of detention center guards and smugglers on their way to countries of destination in order to earn money and survive.

He also drew attention to the Houthi’s complicity in the neglect of girls in the areas they rule. In this context, the researcher at the Maat Foundation referred to the statistics related to girls ’education at the present time, which express the impact of the current conflict on the educational process and pointed out that 58 % of girls in Yemen are out of education. Primary school, 841 TP1T girls in high school were out of school and 921 TP1T in high school. Muhammad called on the international community to continue funding the educational process in Yemen.

In the end, Maat Foundation called on the Security Council to include the penalties related to Security Council Resolution No. 2140 of the Minister of Interior in the government of the unrecognized Ansar Allah group, Abdul Karim Amin al-Din al-Houthi for his involvement in violence against Yemeni women in the past year, in addition to all acts of intimidation and intimidation against Women issued by him and the agencies that pass on his directives, in addition to placing the challenges that women face in Yemen on the council’s monthly agenda, including targeting women for direct murder, sexual violence and torture in prisons, in line with the recommendation made by the expert group on Yemen of the sanctions committee in its report. the last one.

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