Head of the Association for Rehabilitation and Care of Yemeni Disabled Ali Ahmed Al-Wajih said on Thursday that 10 per cent of the Yemeni population is disabled. Roughly two million of the total population estimated at more than 20 million people are disabled, he said.
Hundreds of Yemeni people become physically and mentally disabled a day due to conflicts, tribal disputes and road and work-related accidents, he made clear. (Read on …)
Yemen Post: There are roughly 423000 child laborers in Yemen aged between 6 to 14 years old, most of whom are working in the countryside, a recent official survey has said.
Also, most of the children are subjected to physical and psychological abuse, it said, pointing out that amid poverty many families send their children to work to support them. (Read on …)
A war against children, fought by children on both sides.
the Naitonal Annual study also finds young soldiers fighting on both sides
(Read on …)
8% registered with the state…
Yemen Times: The Authority of Civil Status and Civilian Records, yesterday, launched an ambitious strategy to update the records by 2015.
The authority, which is responsible for issuing birth certificates, personal and family identity cards as well as death, marriage and divorce certificates, has so far issued only the personal identity cards, automatically. The service, which is available at the governorate centers covers only 20 districts from a total of 333 districts around the country, as of today and expanding this service is one of the main objectives of the strategy including transferring the archives to a digital system. This venture also entails constructing new premises with adequate space. (Read on …)
Yemeni film maker chronicles Akhdam women’s struggle for life and dignity in Yemen at HUB, click here for vid.
“Breaking the Silence” chronicles the lives and injustices against the Akhdam women in Yemen. The ‘Akhdam’ , singular Khadem, meaning “servant” in Arabic, are a social group in Yemen, distinct from the majority by their darker skin and African descent. Although they are Arabic-speaking and practicing Muslims, they are regarded as non-Arabs and designated as a low caste group, frequently discriminated against and confined to unskilled and menial labor. In a society already riddled with patriarchy and poverty, the distain and discrimination against the Akhdam renders Akhdam women easy targets of violence and abuse. Akhdam women are subject to hate-based attacks and sexual assaults without any type of legal or social recourse.
This video, produced by Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights and WITNESS, featuring the stories and voices of these three women, Haddah, Qobol, and Om Ali recounting their stories of violence, injustice and forced poverty uncover the legacy of discrimination the ‘Akhdam’ live with daily and the necessity for urgent action against these atrocities.
WFP hunger hotspots: Yemen – 20 Nov 2009
Source: United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
20 Nov 2009Lack of funding has kept the CP on hold since June; under the HFP EMOP, 40 percent of mothers and children will not receive nutrition assistance for six of the 12 planned months. Overall, limited and late funding will leave 1.4 of nearly 1.7 million beneficiaries of the CP without assistance in November.
Following a three-week blockade of supply routes to Sa’ada town in October, WFP has been able to re-supply. Planned distribution to 55,500 IDPs in the town and camps is expected to begin 17 November. (Read on …)
The inability of small businesses to get a credit line is actually a huge issue, dull perhaps but consequential. It impedes the diversification and growth of the economy by region, product and ownership. As the recent tightening of credit globally stunted the world economy, in Yemen negative result of the failure of banks to grant credit to small and medium businesses is magnified by other economic factors including corruption and the lack of infrastructure including electricity and roads. At the same time the banks make a wide range of inappropriate loans to “influential persons”, a practice that lead to the seizure of the Watani bank a few years ago.
Micro-credit has been one of the most effective methods globally of raising poverty stricken groups to self sufficiency. When people have an opportunity to better their future, they usually do, and work very hard doing it. The heart of a healthy economy is small businees, and in Yemen there are so many monopolies and unfair practices. Factionalism and identity politics are the norm, with marginalized groups also excluded from credit and therefore economic opportunity. Its another detrimental offshoot of the unipolar configuration of the political landscape and the increasing consolidation of economic structures (including land ownership) in the hands of the elite (Saleh and his gang). The Yemen Post reports on a study by the IFC:
The Yemeni banks are unwilling to grant credits for small and medium enterprises or they may give conditional credits for high profits due to high risks, a study has said.
The study conducted by the International Finance Corporation also noted that most of the small and medium enterprises in Yemen are not much qualified for loans because they don’t have enough guarantees. The ratio of credits to deposits is very low, about 33 percent, it finds, adding that only 4 percent Yemeni people have bank accounts. (Read on …)
Half of Yemeni children are stunted from malnutrition. That’s a stat from 2006, things are much worse now. A third of Yemenis are malnourished, and children suffer the most. However corruption, economic monopolies, wars and the diversion (and sale) of aid are among the most detrimental factors impacting Yemenis.
World Food Programme appeals for $23 million to help Yemenis women and children 9. July 2009
The World Food Programme (WFP) issued an urgent appeal on Tuesday for $23 million in “financial support from international donors for food aid to Yemen specifically targeted at women and children,” AFP/Google.com reports. (Read on …)
Where do you think they are reselling the confiscated weapons? Any restrictions on the major weapons dealers and importers yet, no? The black market is a major aspect of the Yemeni economy.
SANAA, Yemen, July 16 (UPI) — Yemen’s Interior Ministry says nearly 293,000 unregistered weapons have been seized since a ban on carrying weapons was instituted in August 2007.
The official Yemeni news agency SABA said the weapons were seized in the capitals of Yemen’s governorates and at security cordon areas.
Deputy Interior Minister Saleh al-Zawari activated the weapon-carrying ban in the governorates of Abyan, Baidha’a, Hadramout, Ibb, Lahj, Mahrah, Mahweet, Abyan, Ibb, Raymah and Taiz.
Zawari said the ban, which he insists will remain in place, has resulted in a decline in the number of land disputes and revenge crimes in Yemen, as well as an overall drop in the country’s crime rates, SABA reported.
Whoa, last time we checked, it was 2 million abroad. What did they do- give out six million bogus passports in the last two years? (The statistical anomaly is not unusual- during the 2006 elections, there were more registered male voters than men. The official unemployment statistics are pretty funny too.) And now the plan is to establish a monitoring system on Yemeni expats… Does Yemen really need 62 embassies; they’re such money pits. There were those big and repeated announcements in 2005 that the regime was going to close some embassies as money saving measures, Romania I think it was, but it never happened. From the Yemen Observer:
Yemen plans to conduct comprehensive surveys for Yemeni expatriates that would focus on their numbers, jobs, families and activities, and their remittances to their homeland. (Read on …)
A good report entitled Social discrimination still dominates Yemeni culture from the Yemen Times. As I’ve noted since 2005, the Sa’ada War, to a degree, has its roots in the social inversion between the Hashemite class and the tribal class following the 1962 Republican revolution. But back to the article, it lays out the stratification of Yemeni society and its evolution through the decades.
Saeeda was a young Yemeni woman from the akhdam. She was working as a street cleaner in Sana’a when a group of men began to harass her. The men ended up slicing Saeeda’s neck, killing her, and stabbing her brother in the chest several times. Nothing was done by authorities to investigate or avenge Saeeda’s death.
More than 50 decades ago, there were only two visible classes, the Imam and his family who were descendants of the Prophet, and the rest of the public. But after the Imamate rule ended, three classes emerged: the Hashemite or saada, the tribes, known as a’raab or qabail, and the mazaayina, also known as atraaf. (Read on …)
Some women in Yemen believe they are subordinate to men. Some don’t. One time one of the “hard Muslims” as he called himself, told me that women have only half a brain. So I asked him if he ever met a smart woman and a stupid man, was it possible a woman’s half brain could be larger than a small brained man? He didn’t have an answer for that or the question, why would God give women talents if not to use them? He just started ranting he loved Osama bin Laden and offered to send me a book
State report on women issued
SANA’A, June 11 (Saba)- Woman National Committee (WNC) issued its recent state report on challenges facing women, empowering her and future tendencies to promote her in different fields, political, economic, cultural and social.Granting the two sexes equal opportunities to get work based on equity in all issues included in the report.
Women limited and weak political participation, women parliamentarian representation, enacting with quota demand, woman lower participation in the work, illiteracy spread, increasing mortality percentage among woman and false conceptions on woman’s issues are the main issues the report talked about. (Read on …)
Half of Yemen has no electricity and summer is here. There’s already some deaths reported. Black-outs are several times a day. It all goes back to corruption and mismanagement.
Yemen’s total production of power is 650 megawatts, and the electricity ministry purchases about 200 megawatts from international companies to address part of the shortfall, according to the ministry. (Read on …)
One crisis exacerbates another: Yemen Observer:
Water supply for subscribers in the Capital Secretariat of Sana’a has decreased by 30-40 % as a result of a stop of more than 85 water pumps due to electric blackouts. Pumps stop working between 7-10 hours per day. If the situation were to continue, every neighborhood would get water once every 8-9 days, said a source at the Public Corporation for Water and Sanitation.The Corporation is working hard to reduce this problem that represents more than 22 thousand cubic meter of water daily. The issue of water shortage in Sana’a in particular has worsened in the past few years due to several factors, the most important of which is groundwater depletion as a result of incorrect irrigation methods and qat growing.
Official statistics show that only 50 percent of Sana’a’s population, 2 million people, can be supplied with water. Just under 50 percent of people living in other Yemeni governorates can get clean drinking water. However, houses in many areas of Yemen are not originally provided with water supply service. In addition, some studies estimate that the stored water of Sana’a governorate will be exhausted in the next 10 to 15 years.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also highlights the health consequences of water scarcity, such as diarrheal diseases including cholera, typhoid fever and salmonellosis. Lack of potable water is also a common cause of food poisoning, other gastrointestinal viruses and dysentery.
Just one of the many targets though…
April 20 (Bloomberg) — Yemen is in danger of losing what’s left of its Jewish community, which has called the country home for more than 2,500 years and provided its kings for a century.
Growing intimidation and violence are pushing the 300 Jews left in the Arabian Peninsula country to flee to Israel or the U.S. Four months ago, a Muslim extremist gunned down Jewish- studies teacher Moshe Yaish Nahari, a father of nine, in the town of Raida, north of the capital of Sana’a. (Read on …)
Part Two, Yemen Times, Courtesy of the investigative reports department SABA News Agency Translated by Yemen Times Staff
About 1,000 people – according to the official institutions in Yemen- were involved in drug crime in the past 8 years. During the past 4 years, more than 800 people involved in drug smuggling have been arrested, 150 of them foreigners, mainly from Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. (Read on …)
That’s really a shame, predictable though. OpenDocument
Yemen: Fears of flood-affected farmers abandoning agriculture
Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)Date: 12 Apr 2009
SEYOUN, 12 April 2009 (IRIN) – An official has warned that delays in restoring the severely flood-affected agriculture sector in Hadhramaut Governorate, southeastern Yemen, will prompt farmers to abandon their jobs and seek work in other sectors, affecting food security in the impoverished country. (Read on …)
Amran is where the two YSP leaders (and the baby) were assassinated.
Thousands sentenced for Yemen vote fraud
DPA/Sanaa
Courts in Yemen’s western province of Amran have sentenced 14,522 people to suspended three-month jail terms each for registering to vote multiple times, the state Saba news agency reported yesterday. (Read on …)
The corruption is predictable but the UN’s incompetence and complacency in the face of these disasters, from the refugees, to Sa’ada to Hadramout, is staggering.
SEYOUN, 1 April 2009 (IRIN) – Delays in distributing food aid are generating anger and despair among people in the southern Yemeni governorate of Hadhramaut affected by the October 2008 floods, flood-displaced people and community leaders say.
“We only received food rations for one month after the disaster,” said Issa Awadh Sedan, a mason from Mashta, a severely affected part of Tarim District in Hardhamaut. Sedan lost his house in the floods which left 47 dead and displaced 25,000 others. (Read on …)
There’s not much difference between a nine year old bride and a slave, however in this case the sale of a grown man was documented in a Yemeni court.
News Yemen
Yemen Observatory for Human Rights disclosed a slavery case formally approved in a Yemeni court. The YOHR said a man in Hajja province brought another man for Yr 500,000 in 2000. It said that a court in Hajja governorate documented the slavery case. (Read on …)
Armies of Liberation website was banned by Yemeni authorities in 2007 and remains blocked by government censors despite a partial regime change in 2012.
Yemen Articles 2004-2010
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