Mood at women’s conference optimistic despite political apathy

Yemen’s Women’s National Committee (WNC) marked International Women’s Day earlier this week with its annual two-day conference in the capital, Sana. In her opening speech, the deputy chair of the WNC, Horiya Mashhour, demanded that the organisation be upgraded to a ministry and called for a 30 percent quota for women in all policy-making positions, both elected and unelected. Another key issue at the conference, which was supported by the Yemeni government, international NGO Oxfam and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), was early marriage. A film on the subject, made by UNFPA, was premiered during the conference. While the conference covered topics as diverse as HIV/AIDS, working women and globalisation, child smuggling and women in sport, one of the most hotly debated sessions was on the quota system. There is universal suffrage in Yemen and women can stand for parliament. In the last general election over 40 percent of registered voters were women, but only one woman was elected to the 301 seat parliament. The session on quotas described how, although there have been discussions of the 30 percent quota, the ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC) has agreed to a female quota of only 10 percent for parliament and that on condition of the agreement the other political parties - including the conservative Islamic opposition. A prominent member of the WNC, Eman Mashhour, told IRIN, that there was still resistance and apathy in the political realm. She pointed out that prime minister, Abdul Kader Ba-Jammal, who is also chair of the Supreme Council for Women, was due to open the conference, but declined at the last minute - instead the Minister of Social Affairs and Labour, Abdulkarem al-Arhabi, attended. Two years ago the president inaugurated the conference and was due to do so again last year, but then deputised the prime minister instead. “It means we’re talking to ourselves,” Mashhour said, adding: “This will not make us go backwards, instead we become more insistent.” Mashhour described the conference - which was attended by representatives from all over the country - as a forum both for advocacy and for knowledge sharing. “The conference is a good platform to speak out about our issues and rights”. She described how five years ago in Yemen “gender was considered a Western concept which belonged only to women, not to the whole of society,” but that the situation was slowly improving, largely because of international pressure. The annual conference, which is in its fourth year, is well publicised in the national media: “It shows people we are here”. Nagat al-Kalaqi of the Yemen Girl Guides told IRIN that the conference was more powerful than the previous year. Although she also felt that the government was able to do very little because of customs and traditions, she believes that the situation of women in the country was changing, describing how “there are now girls who can express themselves, who don’t accept the situation”. The Girl Guides participated in the UNFPA film and al-Kalaqi said that early marriage was the primary focus of the conference. A study was presented describing how child marriage is very common in Yemen, with girls marrying as young as eight or nine, these child brides usually marry older men. As Gerd Elmark, programme officer for gender and human rights at UNFPA told IRIN, families marry off their daughters at a young age with the intention of protecting them, although early marriage endangers a girl’s health, her education and her economic capacity. In Yemen, the advised age for girls to marry is 15, but most marriages are customary, rather than registered and so difficult to control. “There are suggestions that the law should be firmed up, so that the legal minimum age for marriage is 18 for boys and girls,” Elmark said. The UNFPA film shows case studies of early marriage in Bangladesh and Burkina Faso, as well as Yemen. It was generally well received, though there was some criticism that the Yemen section of the film included only one real-life story of a girl affected by early marriage, comparing her life with that of a school student. Mashhour remarked that “we should not have any embarrassment. If we keep hiding these things, we will not achieve our aims”. While Elmark agreed in principle to this comment, she emphasised that UNFPA had a responsibility to protect the interests of the girls and can’t overstep cultural boundaries. The film will be taken into villages on UNFPA’s mobile cinema unit as a starting point for discussion on the issue. “Perhaps the very fact that the topic is seen to be discussed openly elsewhere in the world will break down some of the taboo in Yemen,” she added. Yemen has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, with an average of seven children born per woman (with an average of 7.8 in rural areas) and among the worst maternal mortality rates. Officially 570 per 100,000 and up to 1,400 per 100,000, according to the Yemen Demographic Survey of 1994 and the infant mortality rates was 63.26 per 1,000 live births.