But what has often been overlooked in the crisis is the acknowledgment of how different groups of Yemeni citizens are experiencing the conflict differently. In particular, the extreme circumstances of the country’s seven-year-long instability have led many to ignore how Yemeni women often bear the brunt of the issues caused by the crisis, on top of the gender-based challenges they face due to the discriminatory legal system and the crisis’s effect on the level of gender-based violence.

Data about the Yemen crisis’s death toll varies depending on if one focuses on those affected directly by the conflict or if it is extended to deaths caused indirectly. According to the Yemen Data Project, the country has incurred over 18,000 attacks, of which around half were deaths and half were injuries, as a direct result of the conflict from 2016 to now. This, however, does not include casualties caused by other pressing humanitarian issues the crisis in Yemen has created. The United Nations estimates that over 131,000 have died as a result of the indirect effects of the war in Yemen, including factors such as hunger and lack of access to adequate health services. 

According to the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), a humanitarian non-governmental organization focused on the fight against poverty, an average of six women are killed every day in Yemen due to the conflict. Women and children are also frequently displaced, comprising 75% of displaced individuals. The majority of displacement in Yemen is internal, with Yemenis moving from place to place within the country to avoid fighting, famine, and disease. Some of the displaced are met with humanitarian aid when they arrive at new locations, such as in Marib where the UNHCR, UN, and International Organization for Migration have attempted to provide food and shelter to those fleeing the city of Al Suwayda. 

Women are often disproportionately affected by humanitarian crises in times of civil unrest or war. In the case of Yemen, this inequality is exacerbated as women’s access to work is heavily limited by socio-cultural norms.

For 14 years, Yemen was ranked last in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap index, and only in 2021 did it manage to be ranked second to last — ahead of newly-added Afghanistan. According to the 2021 index, Yemen is one of the countries with the largest economic gender gap, at 28.2% of the gap closed so far, and income gap, with women’s income being around 7% that of men. It also has one of the lowest percentages of women in the labor force, at 6.3%, and the lowest number of women in managerial positions, at 4.1%. On top of this, Yemen was ranked 154/156 in female economic participation and opportunity, 152/156 in educational attainment, 95/156 in health and survival, and 154/156 in political empowerment.

This is likely the result of an extremely patriarchal culture in Yemen, rooted in persistent and extreme gender roles. Yemeni women and girls experience forced niqab (a veil that covers the whole face excluding the eyes), divorce shame, child marriage, domestic violence, and honor killings — all of which are aggravated by the extended and ongoing crisis in the country. 

According to Amnesty International, the crisis has forced Yemeni women to take on greater roles and responsibilities than traditionally expected of them and, as a result, the levels of violence they experience have increased. Women and girls not only face extreme danger due to the crisis and fighting in the region between the Houthis and Yemeni Forces (supported by UAE and Saudi Arabia backed anti-Houthi forces), but also security and economic risks due to a discriminatory legal system. Left with a damaged system of services and infrastructure that is unable to properly support them or allow them to seek legal remedy, and further faced with things like arbitrary detentions and the disappearance of male family members, women in Yemen are stepping up and suffering as a result. 

In 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, known as the Women, Peace and Security resolution. The resolution was enacted in an effort to address the fact that women and girls suffer disproportionately from negative effects during and after times of war. This unfair burden is due to the proliferation of social networks and the magnification of inequality, both of which expose women and girls to things like sexual violence and exploitation in greater capacities than in peacetime. In the nearly two decades since its adoption, the resolution has aimed to help affected women by making them participants in peacemaking efforts and politics. 

The resolution has been somewhat successful in some regions, playing a large part in helping women participate in peace processes in their countries. This has meant enabling women to act as signatories on peace agreements, participate in peace talks and negotiation, assist with humanitarian responses and post-conflict reconstruction, or partake in other peace-driven actions.

Nonetheless, women in Yemen are consistently underrepresented in peace talks, even in the face of concerted effort from the UN and other humanitarian organizations to address this gap. So, despite women taking on the roles vacated by their loved ones who may have been lost in the crisis or forcibly taken and held, they are not able to advocate for their own safety. 

This, however, is not the full extent of challenges that Yemeni women face. According to the World Food Program (WFP), in times of crisis, women and girls are put at greater risk for humanitarian issues, on top of the gender-based issues they already experience. One of the most common problems is that girls are often pulled out of school or forced to marry early in order for families to survive, as many are unable to afford food alongside paying for school or an additional child. The WFP also reports that, for women, one of the main dangers is malnutrition. This can be caused by the burden of pregnancy — more than one million pregnant and lactating Yemeni women required malnutrition treatment or prevention intervention in 2019 — or the burden of childcare. These women have to become self-sacrificing to a dangerous extent, often giving up their own food to feed their children.

Right now in Yemen, around 50,000 people are facing famine-like conditions, and 11 million more are experiencing food insecurity. Young children are particularly vulnerable to hunger, with around half of Yemeni children under five expected to experience acute malnutrition, according to the WFP. 

As the Yemen crisis fades from news headlines, due to the nature of it being such an extended conflict, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the current situation. This is particularly true when considering how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the war-torn country and its most vulnerable populations.

COVID-19 is not the first public health crisis to affect Yemen, as cholera, diphtheria, measles, and dengue fever were all reported in the country prior, with cholera affecting a suspected two million Yemenis since 2016. However, Yemen was, and is not, prepared to handle the pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, medical facilities and personnel have not been left alone during the conflict. More than half of the 5,000 or so health centers have closed and many health professionals have been forced to flee. On top of this, health aid has been obstructed by the Houthi and other authorities.

Considering the heavy use of starvation as a weapon of war in Yemen, primarily by the Houthis, the impact of hunger and starvation on an individual’s health and the disproportionate way women experience hunger has escalated the pandemic. In April 2020, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen warned that, based on epidemiological projections, nearly 16 million people in Yemen could be infected by COVID-19 under the current conditions. 

The actual number of cases in Yemen is difficult to know as data on COVID-19 in the country is difficult to collect. The government has only reported deaths in the hundreds, but considering the disastrous nature of the healthcare system and the fact that war makes health crises worse, the number is likely much higher. Still, There is evidence that the country is currently experiencing a second wave of the disease. On top of the expected rise in cholera cases with the rainy season in May, this could be devastating for the population, and it will further complicate and inflame the suffering and discrimination that women in Yemen already face.

There is hope, however, as at the end of March 2021, Yemen received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines, which included 360,000 doses, 13,000 safety boxes and 1.3 million syringes, through COVAX. This was the first step in the plan to vaccinate the country, with an estimated 1.9 million doses expected to be delivered to the country throughout the rest of the year. Those leading the vaccine effort will be forced to navigate the crumbling healthcare system and figure out how to equitably distribute vaccinations. 

Women are suffering in Yemen as a result of the humanitarian crisis, and the COVID-19 health crisis has only made things worse. It is important to understand and acknowledge the nuanced convergence of humanitarian, security and public health crises in Yemen. Otherwise, it is easy to get lost in the severity and horror often broadcasted and covered through global media. 

The post The Yemen Crisis is Disproportionately Affecting Women and Girls appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Muskan and Rashid’s story is only one that represents the numerous and widespread challenges interfaith couples are facing in India. These couples have faced targeted persecution by Indian authorities under the new anti-conversion laws instituted across the country. The new laws are being publicized to halt “Love Jihad,” a term coined by Hindu nationalist factions to imply that Muslim men trick Hindu women into marriage for the sole purpose of converting them to Islam.

In India, marriage is a social process and practice, the boundaries of which are often defined by customs, traditions and even prejudices. Marriages within the Hindu community itself are primarily performed within caste groups, with only 11% of marriages per year being inter-caste marriages. The stigma is further heightened for interfaith marriages, making them even more of a rarity in the Indian social fabric, with only 2.1% of women who marry outside their faith. 

State legislatures have historically passed laws to regulate religious conversions, and currently, nine states have provisions regulating religious conversions to varying degrees. Even though lawmakers from the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim that the laws are not meant to target any specific religious communities, the majority of the cases registered under the law in states like Uttar Pradesh have been against Muslim men. 

The Love Jihad conspiracy and the resulting anti-conversion laws seem to be just another additive to the ruling party’s ongoing conquest to further marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims through various legal measures. The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, which provides citizenship to only non-Muslim refugees from neighboring countries, along with the government’s strict criminalization of the Muslim “Triple Talaq” divorces, has left little to the imagination when it comes to the ideological standing of the ruling party.

“This law will prevent innocent girls being forcefully converted on the pretext of marriage,” said Narottam Mishra, the home minister in BJP-ruled central state of Madhya Pradesh. Prime Minister Modi, meanwhile, has mostly remained silent on the issue and the Central Government has said it has no plans on drawing up federal legislation on the matter, and will leave it up to the states. 

The Love Jihad conspiracy is not the creation of the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor his party, the BJP. Rather, it is the culmination of the continuous stereotyping of Muslim men as “predatory” since India’s colonial days. In 1924, a Muslim bureaucrat from Cawnpore (now Kanpur) was accused of “abducting and seducing” a Hindu woman and forcibly converting her to Islam. The idea later gained political relevance in the late 2000s when it was taken up by fringe Hindu-right groups in southern India, eventually leading to quasi-legitimizing orders by state courts that ordered probes and annulled interfaith marriages. Later, it was used by the BJP to stir up communal tensions and cause riots in other parts of the country for electoral gains. 

The Love Jihad conspiracy has proven to be wildly successful talking for the BJP, triggering all the right politically-conducive anxieties — a majoritarian pseudo-victimhood in the secular republic, patriarchal insecurities in an increasingly modernizing India and blatant Islamophobia that unites Hindu nationalist sympathizers like no other factor.

On January 6, 2021, The Supreme Court of India refused to stay the enactment of the latest anti-conversion laws in states across the country, thus indirectly giving green lights to laws resembling the one that was used to arrest Rashid and Muskan. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, implemented a law called “the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion” causing much uproar as it established a set jail term of ten years for a marriage conducted for the sole purpose of religious conversion. 

However, the onus of determining the “validity of a union” has been placed on the same authorities and police who already harass and intimidate interfaith couples who seek to marry. India does not have a uniform civil code due to the diverse array of historical customs and traditions of different communities. As a result, couples must register their marriages through laws that govern personal relationships and disputes of their specific communities. 

Interfaith couples, meanwhile, have used the Special Marriages Act of 1954 that requires verification from local authorities, a waiting period of thirty days, and mandates the publication of their intent to wed in a newspaper in case objections might arise. The law also vests the authorities with the power to investigate any complaint against the couple, which puts interfaith couples in a precarious position as most of them seek to get married without parental consent or knowledge.

As much as the Love Jihad conspiracy is about the broader project of Hindu nationalism and the implicit strokes of Islamophobia it contains, it is also about policing women’s sexuality and choices. Marriages of choice are extremely rare in India (only 4%) as the concept of arranged marriage, parents’ choosing brides and grooms for their children, reigns supreme. The practice of picking spouses might come off as just conserving familial customs of elderly respect, but it is equally about preserving puritanical standards of caste, class and religion. Now, the Indian state is willing to police love that does not measure up to those puritanical parameters.

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Some notable ones as of late are a woman’s right to drive, granted after the law stripping this right was abolished in June 2018, a woman’s right to obtain a passport and travel abroad without consent from a male guardian if she is at least twenty-one, granted through an amendment in August 2019, and most recently, a woman’s right to join the armed forces, passed in February 2021.

These laws are responded to with global media frenzies, reported on by the largest news outlets in every major region and country. As a result, it is not uncommon for people to think that Saudi Arabia has generally improved in women’s rights. However, according to the Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) 2020 World Report on Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabian women are still required to have male guardian approval for many things such as getting married, leaving prison, or obtaining healthcare. Women also face discrimination in regards to family, divorce, children and child custody matters. On top of this, men are still able to file for guardianship of women based on perceived “disobedience,” which can lead to women being forcibly imprisoned or kept in the male guardian’s home. 

This report shows little change in Saudi Arabia’s position in both the HRW 2019 World Report and the HRW 2018 World Report. So, despite chipping away at the guardianship system with small legislative changes, the overall treatment of women, in regards to legislation, has remained fairly consistent. 

Perhaps even more egregious than the persistence of the guardianship system is the Saudi government’s treatment of those who have spoken out against it. While the government is praised in the press for somewhat minor changes in the system, the women’s rights activists calling for change are arbitrarily imprisoned. Ahead of the lifting of the ban on women driving in 2018, over a dozen women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia were arrested. After being held for a year, many faced trials throughout 2019. These trials were closed, barring journalists and diplomats from attending. One of the activists, Loujain al-Hathloul, was only released this February after spending over one thousand days in detention. Even after her release, she faces travel bans and a suspended three-year sentence under Saudi terrorism laws.

Other women’s rights activists arrested alongside al-Hathloul were said to have been released as well, but it is likely they are under similar restrictions, diminishing their ability to speak up. This was not an isolated incident. According to Amnesty International, in April of 2019 fourteen women’s rights activists were arrested for peacefully supporting women’s rights movements. The individuals were kept in detention through the end of the year without charge or trial. 

Many believe that the Saudi government’s decisions to make changes to their policies regarding women’s rights come from international pressure over anything else. This is a particularly popular stance when considering the most recent reforms, as President Biden has put pressure on the Saudi government through his cabinet’s commitment to protecting human rights abroad. This is thought by many to be the main reason behind the release of al-Hathloul, but it does not reflect a real change in the will of the Saudi government to protect and help their female citizens. 

Aside from the issue of stifling women’s rights activists, the Saudi government’s actual reforms seem to be largely cosmetic. Despite passing a domestic abuse ban in 2013, the Saudi government still, in many cases, mistreats the women who decide to report such abuse. In 2020, a large social media movement started in Saudi Arabia where women used the hashtag “Why I Didn’t Report It” to discuss their experiences with domestic abuse and the legislation surrounding it. Women who participated spoke of smear campaigns and victim-blaming if they reported, and many were arrested after being reported by their male guardians for disobedience. As long as the male guardianship system exists, many women in Saudi Arabia do not feel safe going to the police and are unable to escape abusive situations. 

There has also been a large resistance to the changes in the law from those that want the guardianship system to remain intact. Many women face backlash from their families for invoking their recently granted rights. So, although women may have the legal right to join the military, get a job, drive a car or get a passport, all without the consent of a male guardian, many still feel obligated to get permission from their father, brother, or husband depending on how accepting the family is of the new laws.  

Considering that women have been beaten, arrested, and, in extreme cases, killed for disobedience under the male guardianship system, its continued existence does not set a promising precedent for the future of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Until major action is taken to dismantle the discriminatory guardianship system and women’s rights activists are no longer silenced, it is difficult to say that the Saudi government has made any serious headway in promoting women’s rights.

It seems many recent reforms came from a place of economic strategizing rather than a serious commitment to change. For example, the expansion of jobs women are now allowed to work expands the Saudi workforce, boosting the economy. It’s very possible that this is the main goal for the Saudi government when taking into account the fact that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly dedicated himself to diversifying the Saudi economy in preparation for a post-oil future. Allowing women to participate in the economy in a greater capacity would be a large part of that. 

It is worth questioning why the governments and news organizations of the world praise Saudi Arabia for these small changes without demanding the real changes necessary for achieving gender equality. For countries like the United States, which has a vested interest in maintaining good relations with the world’s largest oil producer, it has become common practice to turn a blind eye to the questionable practices of the Saudis. 

This was affirmed just recently with the Biden Administration’s decision not to penalize the Saudi Crown Prince over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi despite their aforementioned commitment to human rights. Khashoggi’s murder on October 2, 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, caused international outrage due to the suspected involvement of the Saudi government. In February 2021, a U.S. intelligence report on the murder was released directly implicating the Saudi crown prince. Biden decided that the relationship was too important to risk direct punishment, citing counter-terrorism and facing Iran as his reasoning.

Without a greater commitment to abolishing the male guardianship system and with a continued history of suppressing the voices of women’s rights activists, it is hard to believe that the Saudi government wants to bring about real change. In combination with inaction on an international level, it is likely that this pattern of making minimal revisions to legislation preceded or followed by sweeping crackdowns on activism will continue to act as the only way the Saudi government addresses women’s rights.

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At age 12, a visit to the hairdresser marked a rare occasion for Umm Mohammad. “We were all very excited, as each girl had just been given a new, white dress.” And yet, the day didn’t proceed as expected. “Suddenly this man, who was really a stranger to us, started to undress us,” she told the German news organization Deutsche Welle. “Then he got out his razor blade.” Under no anesthesia and unhygienic conditions, Mohammad underwent an experience that would skew her perception of womanhood and traumatize her for the rest of her life. Her “circumcision” left literal and figurative scars that transcend the pain she experiences every day living in Cairo’s slums. Mohammad’s experience is but one narrative of the oppressed female experience in Egypt.

Among a myriad of other human rights violations, Egypt subjects 91% of its female population to genital mutilation, a procedure defined by a clitoridectomy, the cutting of the clitoris and external genitals, or infibulation, the sewing closed of the vaginal opening. Although the cultural practice is male-engineered, it’s most often propagated by mothers, who believe it to curb their daughters’ sexual desires and preserve their chastity. Above all, it maintains family honor and ensures marital prospects. However, these mothers are merely vehicles through which men establish a patriarchal dominance over women and deny them agency over their bodies and behavior.

Because many men spurn marriage to women who haven’t undergone some form of female genital mutilation (FGM), perceiving them to be “unclean”, mothers subject their daughters to the procedure in order to maximize marriage prospects. In this way, FGM has become a cultural practice for young girls as a critical right of passage into womanhood. However, it is men who have calculated this narrow definition of womanhood as a system of self-oppression. Men aren’t oppressing women; women are oppressing women. This ingenious and twisted system works in two ways: girls avoid pre-marital sex because they both fear the pain of breaking their stitching and the dishonor that comes with subverting a system that values honor above all else.

The practice, however, plays but one part in the female narrative around sexuality and honor. Every aspect of it caters to a man’s desires. Let’s consider infibulation, the sewing shut of the vaginal opening, which leaves only a small portion open for urination and menstruation. Many men physically prefer penetrating a woman who’s undergone the procedure; her first sexual encounter, and even subsequent times, will require him to literally rip her open. On a psychological level, the surgery allows men to claim women as property, which feeds into the cultural pressure for women to ‘save their chastity’ for their husbands. But, men are really stealing a woman’s agency over her own body; once that has been claimed, the woman often feels powerless. Yet, the practice doesn’t merely increase a man’s pleasure; it simultaneously decreases the woman’s by removing what many would argue is the epicenter of female sexual pleasure. Many women will never feel any pleasure, insinuating that female sexuality is of both shameful and secondary importance—even within the confines of marriage.

While many North African countries have yet to ban FGM as a practice, Egypt already has, which might indicate a turning of the tide. According to the UN, legislative steps towards punishing perpetrators are critical. Following the death of an 11-year-old during an FGM procedure in 2008, Egyptian legislators passed the Child Rights Law No. 126 to punish perpetrators with three months to two years of imprisonment—or a meager $700 fine. However, November 2014 marked the first time an incident reached trial. And, more discouraging, the rates of FGM haven’t changed significantly since 2008. This indicates a discrepancy between law and reality, which could be explained by Egypt’s political instability.

The Mubarak Regime prevented many medical professionals from conducting the procedure since they feared the repercussions of Suzanne’s Law, which outlawed FGM and liberalized divorce laws. No one had been prosecuted under his rule; however, in an attempt to obscure the realities of authoritarianism to the West, the Mubarak Regime gave women more opportunities to secure new freedoms. However, under ambiguous political authority, doctors now express a flagrant disregard for the law, willing to accommodate any family willing to pay the price. In fact, there’s been a drastic shift in those who actually facilitate FGM procedures. Egyptians are increasingly turning to medical professionals instead of local community members. Unlike many other MENA countries with ubiquitous female circumcision practices in which local village circumcisers or barbers perform the procedure, Egyptian doctors now conduct most operations—77% of them, in fact. Though this is a safer method than that which Umm Mohammad endured, it is concerning that doctors are willing to conduct a procedure with no medical benefits and a slew of physical and psychological risks. While engaging and educating local communities remains an important facet of combatting this savagery against women, it appears that directing law enforcement towards doctors might be more effective.

Within a convoluted system of authority and a burgeoning democracy, human rights need to be at the forefront of the public dialogue in Egypt. Women are especially vulnerable to abuse, especially under a cultural backdrop that perpetuates sexual violence. With a growing population of dissenters to the practice, it’s up to the government to enforce its codified laws against FGM, starting with prosecution and education of doctors. However, Egyptian women might have to wait a while to see their rights actualized, since it is unlikely that these changes will arrive under President al-Sisi, widely known for defending the “virginity tests” conducted on female protesters in 2011.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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