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Direct Link to 8-Page Amnesty
Report:
Yemeni women in Sanaa old city.
© AP/PA
Photo/Kamran Jebreili
25 November 2009
Women in
Their rights are routinely violated because Yemeni laws as well as tribal and
customary practices treat them as second class citizens.
Women are not free to marry who they want and some are forced to marry when
they are children, sometimes as young as eight.
The practice was highlighted last Friday, 20 November, by the UN Committee
against Torture, which expressed its concern at the “legality” of early
marriages of girls, calling it “inhuman and degrading treatment”.
Once married, a woman must obey her husband and obtain his permission just to
leave the house.
Women are valued as half the worth of men when they testify in court or when
their families are compensated if they are murdered.
They are also denied equal treatment when it comes to inheritance and are often
denied it completely.
Women are dealt with more harshly than men when accused of “immoral” acts, and
men are treated leniently when they murder female relatives in “honour
killings”.
Such discriminatory laws and practices encourage and facilitate violence
against women, which is rife in the home and in society at large.
Despite this, recent years have seen some positive developments for women’s
rights, such as the creation of the quasigovernmental National Women’s
Committee (NWC) in 1996 and the appointment in 2001 of a minister of state for
human rights, which was upgraded to ministerial level in 2003.
The government has also engaged with intergovernmental bodies and reported to
the UN committee overseeing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women, to which Yemen is a party.
Most significantly, women themselves have helped to create a vibrant civil
society, and women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have achieved some
success in some campaigns for reforms. In 2009, for example, the government
repealed Article 3(1) of the 1990 Nationality Law to allow children born to a
Yemeni mother and a non-Yemeni father to qualify for Yemeni nationality.
However, other reforms are urgently needed. Amnesty International is calling
for an end to discriminatory laws and violence against women, adding its voice
to the demand of women in Yemen for full and equal access to their human
rights.
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