Armies of Liberation

1.8 million are out of school, many work on family farms in addition to the half million street children. Poverty drives child marriage and child trafficking in addition to child labor.

Yemen Observer: More than 500 thousand children working in the streets

Article Date: Dec 20, 2010 – 4:19:37 PM

More than 500 thousand children are working in the streets, according to new statistics from the Central Bureau for Statistics. This number has been documented to the Social Affairs Ministry through several implemented surveys. (Read on …)

More corruption, thievery, oppression and mismanagement, Attagammua:

لجنتان برلمانيتان لتقصي الحقائق حول ادارة دبي لميناء الحاويات بعدن و(PIL) تغير اتجاه حاويات الترانزيت من ميناء عدن الى ميناء جيبوتي Two parliamentary committees to investigate the facts on the management of the Dubai container port in Aden and (PIL) change the direction of transit containers from the port of Aden port of Djibouti
الثلاثاء , 26 أكتوبر 2010 م Tuesday, October 26, 2010 (Read on …)

Really tragic numbers here.

Daily Times: A study carried out in 2010 by the US-based aid group CHF International revealed that out of Yemen’s 11 million children, five million are currently employed. Three-fifths of those do not receive an education while the remaining two million both study and work at the same time.
CHF said that 40 percent of Yemeni children are drawn into the labour market between the ages of seven and 13. (Read on …)

With the oil revenues down, pretty soon they wont be able to cover the state’s payroll of bribes and salaries. Bloomberg

The International Monetary Fund approved a $370 million loan for Yemen to support a three-year plan aimed at cutting the budget deficit and reducing poverty. The Washington-based lender made an initial disbursement of $53 million available immediately, according to a statement posted on its website yesterday. (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 …)

This strike has been going on for years. I have a copy of the employment contract for the port workers. It allows punitive transfers and termination without cause, among a number of other illegal provisions.

HOOD: About the suffering of the workers port of Aden container from abuse

Revealed by local authorities in the governorate of Aden and the ugly face biased to manage the company operating the port of Aden Container “DP World” in farsightedness, in violation of the Constitution and the law to prevent dock workers from exercising their constitutional and legal in the peaceful sit-in to claim their rights project, but proceeded to launch phase new use of cruelty and violence when dispersing the peaceful sit on Saturday 5/6/2010, which resulted in injuries to workers and the arrest of (9) after the port workers had gathered in the round of Caltex for going on strike, which started on 05/24/2010 after reversed (down) the company’s implementation of the commitments made in the minutes earlier with representatives of the workers of the equality of reward paid workers, the nearest port run by “DP”, a port of Djibouti, and following this record has been suspended a strike a year and a half, as well as the right of workers in health care and the demands of related, including the employer must provide the rights of the worker in accordance with the Labour Code. (Read on …)

Yemen Observer – The General Labor Union in Yemen (GLU) called all workers in Yemen to initiate a general strike starting on Saturday, May 15. (Read on …)

Its like a pro-government rally in North Korea or Cuba but the adoring crowds are less synchronized and color coordinated. Yemen Post

Thousands of Yemeni people, students and state employees gathered on Saturday at the Al-Thawra Stadium for the carnival called and organized by the General People’s Congress, the ruling party, the National Coalition Parties and civil society organizations within the celebrities on the 20th anniversary of unification. (Read on …)

The Yemeni government traditionally skimmed a lot of oil revenue by under reporting both the volume and price of oil sales, and large amounts of subsidized imported diesel were smuggled abroad. Efforts at economic diversification were hampered by massive corruption, bureaucratic infighting and ineptitude and the lack of political will or perhaps comprehension. Its hard to see how they are going to make the civil service and military payroll going forward. The government payroll is the main reason why people in the north aren’t protesting, like those in the south. Jobs are very scarce in Yemen.

Yemen Post Yemen’s oil revenues sharply fell during the past ten months by 65 percent to $ 1.473 billion compared with $ 4.149 billion in the same period last year, government reports have said. (Read on …)

In a joint statement today “The Educators syndicate” and “The Education Profession syndicate” in the governorate of Taiz condemned the illegal deductions the government imposed on their salaries, which was deducted to the benefit of fake syndicate called ” The education & discipline profession syndicate”. (Read on …)

Yemen Times

Jamal Al-Sanabani, Deputy President of the Yemeni Laborers Union spoke to Ali Saeed from the Yemen Times about the nature of union work and the challenges that unions face. (Read on …)

frm the Yemen Post:

Like Ali, thousands of Yemeni women work in unpaid jobs and these jobs include farming, herding, collecting firewood, etc. They are denied any rights. They receive no medical care or education.
Compared to women of rural areas who work in unpaid jobs, the unemployment rates hit high among urban area women. There is just a small number of women who work in public and private sectors.
According to official statistics, women’s unemployment rates reaches 39 percent in Yemen while it is just 16 percent among men. (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 …)

Yemen Times

The political situation remains challenging. A concerted government campaign has succeeded in suppressing Al-Qaida activities but the group retains the ability to engage in sporadic incidents such as a recent attack on Korean tourists. The Government also reached an agreement with the opposition to delay parliamentary elections for two years, thereby averting a major political crisis. Finally, demonstrations in the South have become less frequent and violent. Concerns remain, however, over the fragile peace accord with the Houthis signed in July 2008, which is threatened by intermittent clashes and mutual accusations of breaches. (Read on …)

Raufa ran for the head of the YJS and faced a lot of pressure from many quarters, including the VP of Yemen and Yahya Saleh.

Yemen Post

FK: Were you subject to pressures from higher ranking officials to force you to withdraw your candidacy?
RH: I was actually asked to withdraw from the elections and this was published in newspapers. In the beginning, Nasr Taha Mustafa, the former YJS chairman, was delegated by the General People Congress (GPC) to convince me to withdraw. This clearly means this party will not wait until the results come out to see who wins, but rather it works on making other candidates withdraw their candidacy to facilitate the task of its candidate, something that contradicts the core of democracy. I apologized to Mustafa and told him over phone, because I was then abroad, that I will never withdraw.

FK: Have your received similar calls or have you been subject to other sorts of pressure?
RH: Yes, I got a telephone call from Yahya Al-Shauibi, but he did not mention withdrawing the candidacy and offered to meet when I return; however, I avoided him because I knew the message he had wished to convey. I received another call from Yahya Mohammed Abdullah Saleh who later came to my house and told me that GPC Secretary General and Vice-President Abdu Rabu Mansour had requested him to convince me to withdraw.

Update: Yemen Times

In the last minutes of the nomination process, three candidates for the chairperson position withdrew, decreasing the total number of candidates to five. All five of these nominees work with government media establishments as every opposition newspaper and independent candidate withdrew. Two of the five candidates standout: Dr. Raufa Hassan, university professor and director of an NGO, and Yaseen Al-Masoudi from Al-Thawra state run newspaper.

If elected, Dr. Raufa Hassan will be the first woman to chair the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate. She emphasized the necessity of meeting the journalists’ demands. “I will take it upon me to achieve the recommendations which the fourth conference for journalists will bring about,” she said.

Original Post: The last head of the YJS was the head of the state news agency SABA and was a total tool. The regime’s choice for this term is the vice at al Thawra, and there is a lot of contention about the regime’s strong arming the union to select and “elect” its candidate. (See Almotamar.net article for regime endorsement.) The non-governmental journalists are concerned with several important issues as the following Yemen Times oped explains:

Political parties are focusing their attention these days on the upcoming Yemen Journalists Syndicate (YJS) general assembly meeting to elect a new board and chairman. Being the most effective and important civil society organization, both tae ruling party and opposition have been conducting intensive meetings, trying to mobilize journalists to vote for their candidates. The ruling party, in particular, has been mustering journalists working for the state-run media to vote for a selected list representing the party. Heads of these media outlets have used their positions to influence their journalists to vote for a specific group of journalists. This demonstrates how these parties are keen to control the YJS and manipulate it to serve their own political agenda.
(Read on …)

So how are they supposed to get their back pay?

Yemen Post: Tens have been arrested when police broke up on Tuesday a strike by the employees of the Aden branch of the Yemen oil company.

Many other employees and people of those whose homes are close to the company complex, including children, were injured when police fired live bullets and used tear gas to disperse the protesting workers who began a full-scale strike last Saturday demanding financial rights. (Read on …)

Yemen Times

Yemen’s economy highly depends on oil resources, with the country’s oil exports accounting for around 85 percent of export revenues and 33 percent of the GDP, according to Oct. 2007 statistics.

These figures indicate how heavily Yemen depends on oil, although the depletion threatens the oil reserves which are estimated at 116,800,000 barrels per year and 320,000 barrels per day, on average in 2007.

Yemeni non-oil exports accounted for about 27 percent of export revenues in 2007, with little improvement from 22 percent in 2006. This information came from Yahya Al-Motwakel, Minister of Industry and Trade, who reported it in the latest National Exports Conference which was held in Sana’a between November 24th and 25th, 2008.

The total revenue of the non-oil exports rose from around twelve billion YR in 2000 to YR 123 billion in 2007, according to Noman Al-Mulsi, secretary general of the Yemeni Export Supreme Council. (Read on …)

Yemen Times

What are the statistics for female child laborers in Yemen?

Unfortunately, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor don’t have precise or updated statistics on child labor generally and on girl labor specifically. However, we can say that there are from 400,000 to 800,000 working children in Sana’a. The Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood had conducted a study last year in eight governorates which estimate that there are at least 30,000 spend most of their time in the streets, 60 percent of which work and sleep in the streets. I think that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor intend to conduct a survey in 2009. One thing is for sure, and that is that the number of these girls increases every day.

Yemen Post:

Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Mujawar said Saturday that the rate of illiterate women in Yemen declined to 60% this year from 76.3% in 1994.
At the opening of the fourth annual conference of Yemeni women held in Sana’a, Mujawar noted that the number of Yemeni females who joined primary and secondary schools has increased to represent one third of Yemeni students at these schools.
The rate of female university students also rose to 28% out of the total amount of Yemeni university students, he said.

In his speech that was delivered by Minister of Information Ahmed Hassan Al-Lawzi, the premier pointed out that Yemen has made strides in women’s education saying the number of female university students outnumbers males at some universities and that the number of female lecturers at the government universities increased as well.

“There are about 984 female lecturers out of which 803 lecturers who teach at the government colleges,” he added.

At the event, Mujawar said there is a remarkable progress on women’s rights particularly with women being seen in various sectors mainly medically and politically, a matter which illustrates the government is doing its utmost to empower women in the belief that women play a crucial role in the society.

Yemen has over 2800 girl soldiers, 75 female officers and 76 female judges as well as 414 women with technical and administrative posts, he said.

“The presence of Yemeni females at the medical sector helped reduce the mortality rates among mothers as well as improving the family care services.”

“The country third economic and social development plan included new terms recommending the empowerment of women and combating all forms of discrimination against them.”

Last week, the government approved the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to be among its priorities regarding the rights of women, Mujawar concluded.