Armies of Liberation

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 …)

The relationship between Yemen and China is quite strong and well established. Yemen balances its external relations in a similiar manner to its internal affairs. Yemen’s alliance with the US is offset by its relation with China, Russia, Iran, even Cuba. Yemen supports the Chinese position on Taiwan, and China never pressures Yemen on Human Rights issues, of course. First up, we have Yemen quite understanding of the Chinese crackdown on the Uighur’s and insisting its some conspiracy, which is the standard line for the Yemeni government regarding civil unrest in Yemen.

CNN: The July 5 riot in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is an internal affair of China, the Yemeni ambassador to China said on Wednesday. Yemen supports China’s efforts to defend its national sovereignty, to safeguard its social stability, and the people’s security and property, Abdulmalek Mualemi said in a written interview with Xinhua.

The riot in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, left 197 people dead and more than 1,680 injured….

“Considering the grave loss of lives and property caused by the violence, we believe the incident did not happen spontaneously as some people have claimed, instead, it was premeditated and organized,” he said.

AQAP may target Chinese interests in Yemen- report.

Bloomberg: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said it will target the 50,000 Chinese workers in Algeria and Chinese nationals and projects across northwestern Africa, said Stirling Assynt, which has offices in London and Hong Kong….“Some of these individuals have been actively seeking information on China’s interests in the Muslim world which they could use for targeting purposes,” Stirling Assynt said, adding locations included North Africa, Sudan, Pakistan and Yemen. Other militant groups may make similar threats and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula “could well target Chinese projects in Yemen,” according to the report.

More from Yemen Observer and al Sahwa.

Next: Chinese investment in Yemen, the overt kind. China needs to secure energy supplies and is one of Yemen’s main trading partners.

July 14 (Saba) – Yemen and the Chinese Commercial Vessel Building Company reviewed on Tuesday benefits and investment opportunities provided to investors in Aden Free Zone (AFZ).

Vice-chairman of the General Authority for Free Zones, and Head of the AFZ Abdul-Jalil al-Shuaibi re-invited, during his meeting with deputy general director of the company, Chinese investors to invest in Yemen, especially in establishing a factory for Chinese cars in the country.

Finally the Chinese massage parlors in Sana’a targeted by the Virtue and Vice Commission. The Chinese girls trafficked to Yemen as sex slaves were left crying on the street.

Al Arabyia: Yemeni religious police were out in force Tuesday in a major crackdown that saw many massage parlors and Chinese restaurants in the capital Sanaa shut down for allegedly promoting prostitution and vice.

The Yemeni religious police, modeled after Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, targeted popular tourist areas in Sanaa.

Authorities dragged Chinese women working in several spas and restaurants to the streets and sealed the businesses after posting a sign reading “closed by the authorities,” an eyewitness told Al Arabiya.

The number of Chinese restaurants and spas in the capital has increased significantly in the capital despite the fact that none of them have a legal work permits or Ministry of Health authorization, said an official who supervised the clampdown but spoke on condition of anonymity. (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 …)

Followg the first statement of the Southern Womans Union, ( see here) Yemeni security raided the home of Zahra Saleh Abdullah, the president of the Union.

I’m so happy to see this. The power, courage and wisdom of Yemeni women is an essential requirement to free Yemen, which ever way it goes in the end. Once the women mobilize for justice, its all over. Democracy is about “the people” holding the government to account and making it better. Everyone talks about the fractured nature of Yemeni society holding back progress, and there is no bigger fracture than the gender differential. The most discimination occurs not by region or sect or tribe, but by gender. There’s less of that in the South but it exists. Also and unsurprisingly, the Woman’s Union has a darned good plan of action and most likely will carry it out steadfastly.

My Southern sisters:
We ask for each Southern woman to join our Union, which aims to restore the South. We’d like to inform you that the Union held a meeting on Tuesday in the city of Khormaksar at 4 p.m., and resulted in the following resolutions:
1) To continue with the peaceful struggle until the liberation and restoration of South is achieved.
2) The participation of southern women in all peaceful activities carried out by the leaders of the south revolution.
3) To monitor the violations carried out by the system on the sons of the South
4) To visit the injured, and the families of detainees and martyrs of the south
5) To provide financial and moral support to the university students who were harassed by the system in Sana’a
6) Forming committees in all the southern states
7) To work with the newspapers, and sites which have been blocked by the system, such as Alayyam and Al Ghara’a newspapers, and Shabwa press and Mukalla press (websites).
We condemn such practices that are designed to blind the media as the crimes that are committed against the defenceless people of the south
8 We also strongly condemn the kidnappings and murders of tourists and foreigners, and we consider theses actions as an ac of terrorism, and we demand that these criminals be brought to justice.
We believe that the Sana’a regime is responsible for the murder, injury and abduction of the children.

The Southern activist Zahra Saleh Abdullah, the president of the Union, Dhia Al-Hashemy and Jihad Al-Radfani, and a huge selection of southern women attended the meeting.

Issued by the Southern Women’s Union
23/06/09
Khormaksar
Translated by: Rasha Rashed
Source: Sout al ganoub

Yemeni women are ranked as the least equal on earth for the last two years in a row on the gender equality scale which measures educational, employment and political inclusion etc.

From the Yemen Post In an address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Yemen rejected outright 13 of the recommendations as they violate the Islamic law and content with the Yemeni social norms, Yemennews.net reported.

Yemen told the United Nations that more than 13 recommendations other countries say will improve Yemen human rights standards cannot be fully accepted, the source added.

Meanwhile, the source said that the United Nation Human Rights Council recommended that different forms of violence against women in Yemen should be abolished.

The sources revealed that the most important recommendations included all violations of the human rights of women in situations of capital punishment, and in particular, murder, systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy.

In a statement, Amnesty International said Yemen “has shown little commitment to take new steps to address serious human rights concerns in the country.”

The so-called Universal Periodic Review is the way the council launched in 2006 to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, assesses the respective human rights records of all 192 UN member states.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International condemned the execution of ‘Aisha Ghalib al-Hamzi and has called on the Yemeni authorities not to execute Fatima Hussein Badi and to halt all other executions immediately. The organization opposes the death penalty unconditionally in all situations as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

US State Department

YEMEN (Tier 2 Watch List)

Yemen is a country of origin and, to a much lesser extent, transit and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. (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 …)

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.

These are not random cases of rape. Its an organized system of forced prostitution. In Taiz, there’s a substantial number of babies born to women who were in jail for more than a year.

Yemen Post

Newborns of female prisoners at Yemen’s central jails are subjected to be sold, an organization interested in prisoner affairs said on Saturday.
The Sajeen Organization said at a symposium on female prisoners in Yemen that most prisoners are tortured at jails and sometimes raped.
And when they try to protest maltreatment and illegal acts they are threatened by officials at the jails.

Chairman of the organization said a daughter, named Muntaha, was sold in August 2008 for YR 15,000 that went for her mother and $5000 for her father who works in Sana’a.

Many others abuse issues of female prisoners in the country go unreported, lawyer Abdul Rahman Berman said. Female prisoners face difficult moments during investigations as they are prevented from hiring lawyers.

For her part, Amal Al-Basha, Chairwoman of the Sisters Forum said violations against female prisoner rights take place with permission from the leadership.

She added that human rights organizations and activists are prevented from meeting female prisoners in the country, criticizing arrest and imprisonment measures.

Many are jailed over honor charges and when a female inmate ends her term she finds none to help here and house her. As a result, many female inmates turn into bad community assets.

Related, in Yemen if you don’t have someone to bring you food or money in jail, then you don’t eat

Sahwa Net – Yemeni human rights groups have demanded the Yemeni government to lift suffers of Yemen’s prisoners resulted in by government reducing to food and care expanses allotted to them.

In a letter to President Saleh, the groups which included HOOD , the Arab Sister Forum , Prisoner Organization and human rights activists demanded to grant prisoners all their rights guaranteed by the constitution and law.

Not just the journalists barred at the gate, poor Najoud can’t leave either. The idiot regime doesn’t realize that her story is one of courage and progress and reflects very well on Yemen, or how stupid they look saying she is too young to get on a plane when Parliament hasn’t ratified the change in the law for the minimum marriage age.

VIENNA — Yemen has barred a former child bride from being honored in Austria, saying she is too young to travel alone. When she was less than 10 years old, the girl was forced to marry a man at least three times her age. After being raped and abused by him, she successfully filed for divorce and traveled abroad to talk about her ordeal.

(Read on …)

No not yet, al Motamar

On the other hand members of parliament received today a letter signed a number of religious men, t the forefront of who is the member of the Higher Body of the Islah Party, the President of Al-Eman University Sheikh Abdulmajid al-Zandani. The message mentioned that limiting girls marriage is a restraint f what the Sharia permitted , considering the amendment of the article in the law of personal status on determining marriage age by 17 years is unconstitutional a the Islamic Law id the source of legislations , according to the constitution of Yemen.

It is worth to mention that the amendment that the parliament has previously approved has been returned to parliament for more deliberations in response to proposal by MPs from the specialized committee and the Islah bloc.

Part of the reason family planning rates are low is cultural, which leads back to the following article’s point about the importance of media campaigns, but clearly another contributing factor is the deep corruption in the Health Ministry which substantially and negatively impacts every citizen.

SABA

51% of Yemeni Women don’t use means of family planning in society of high fertility rate

Studies and Figures

Number of government and non-governmental organizations reveals an improvement in the demand for family planning methods among Yemen families who actually using family planning methods, whether traditional or modern ones. According to a multi-indicator cluster survey 2006, 7.27% of married women are using the family planning methods.

The survey showed that the number of women in cities is higher than rural rates by 42.3% and 21.1%, respectively, the age of play a great role in that as the group of 35-39 years were more popular by 35% to 10.4 % for the age group 15 – 19 years. The economic situation index showed that 43.7% of women belong to rich families compared to 17.7% of women from the poorest groups. (Read on …)

This is excellent. HOOD

SANA’A, Feb. 11 — Nojood, 10, Arwa, 9, and Reem, 13, are three girls who went through traumatizing ordeals after being forced into marriage by their families. The three girls’ stories have been an issue of debate in social sessions, conferences and the media. But most importantly the matter was discussed in Parliament, where members have finally approved setting the minimum age for marriage for both boys and girls at 17 years old.

The new law stipulates:

“No child under seventeen years of age is to be married, unless the marriage is seen in the best interest of the child by the judge. The girl’s guardian who violates this law will be penalized. The judge conducting the marriage has to present the marriage document within one month of the marriage at most to the concerned body and the marriage contract must include related documents such as birth certificate, dowry and identity cards. The guardian of either the wife or husband will be financially penalized if they do not register the marriage certificate within the mentioned period. No marriage is to be carried out at any age without the consent of the woman.” (Read on …)

This is excellent news. Neonatal tenanus is a killer that can be prevented or treated like measles, diabetes and cholera.

SANAA, 26 January 2009 (IRIN) – A major campaign to eliminate neonatal tetanus and measles – two killer diseases of children in Yemen – is under way, according to the Health Ministry’s National Programme for Vaccination (NPV).

The six-day campaign began on 24 January.

The neonatal tetanus campaign is targeting some 2,170,000 women aged 15-45 in 17 of the country’s 21 governorates. Over 15,000 health workers are involved in the drive, which is being funded by the Ministry of Health, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, according to Essa Mohammed, head of the NPV. (Read on …)

The hesitance to acknowledge there is prostitution trade in Yemen is part of the reason why more people are getting infected with this sexually transmitted disease. As the article notes, some young girls are driven by poverty to turn to the streets to make money to eat. AIDS is also transmitted by homosexual sex, another taboo topic. The use of condoms significantly reduces the odds of getting aids from an infected partner as well as being a reasonably effective method of birth control. But its such a conservative society that getting even these basic facts to the public become more difficult. It doesn’t make a country look bad when it deals with its problems, but often the tendency is to sweep these difficult issues under the rug.

IRIN

Yemen is ranked 153 out of 177 countries on the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) 2007-08 Human Development Index. According to the Poverty Assessment Report 2007 prepared by the UNDP, the World Bank and the Yemeni government, the percentage of poor people among Yemen’s 21 million population stood at 34.8 percent. According to the UNDP office in Yemen, 15.7 percent of the population lives on less than US$1 a day and 45.2 percent live on less than US$2 a day.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, a programme officer at the UNDP office in Sanaa, said state institutions lacked the capacity to tackle HIV/AIDS, adding: “When there are not enough jobs, young people feel they have no future. Some resort to prostitution.” He also said internal and external migration had played a role in spreading the virus.

Commercial sex work on the rise

Some 16 percent of Yemen’s 21 million population lives on less than US$1 a day and 45 percent lives on less than US$2 a day, according to UNDP

Suad al-Qadasi, chair of the Women’s Forum for Research and Training (WFRT), a local NGO, said prostitution and commercial sex work had begun to increase rapidly over the past three years.

“But Yemen is a conservative community which does not acknowledge this phenomenon. This is a problem in itself,” she told IRIN.

The WFRT recently conducted a survey on commercial sex work but found that people were not willing to admit to its existence. “Denying it is a problem as awareness rests on acknowledging that the phenomenon exists,” Suad said, warning that if the situation continued, HIV/AIDS would be rife.

According to the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2006, Yemeni children were trafficked internally for sexual exploitation, and Yemen was also a destination country for trafficked Iraqi women.

The Reality of Female Participation in Public Institutions

Yemen Times

Despite the presence of women in elections, their contribution in decision-making is still weak. In the legislative field, there is a single seat for women in the entire parliament, from a total of 301. In the Shura Council, women occupy only 2 of 111 seats. On the level of the executive authority, only 2 of 33 ministries are directed by women. There are 39 women deputy ministers and assistants compared with 1210 men in similar positions. Out of 44490 general directors in Yemen, only 168 of them are women. In the diplomatic field, women represent a mere 10 percent of all diplomats, and in the judiciary field they represent 7 percent.

Female participation in the parliamentary elections of 1993 was low as they represented only 18 percent of the total voters. In 1997, this level of participation increased to 27 percent, and by the 2003 elections, the level of women participation increased to 42 percent of the total voters.

Interestingly, it is true that the number of women candidates decreases whenever the number of women voters increases. In the 1993 elections, women candidates represented 1.3 percent, yet in 1997 the percentage of women candidates was down to 1.4. This trend has continued, as in the 2003 elections the ratio of women candidates was only .8 percent.

The GPC attains the highest ratio of women votes, such as in the 2003 elections where it captured 60 percent of the female vote – 43 percent of the total votes for that party. The Islah party received 22 percent of the female vote, which represented 40 percent of the total votes for that party. Only 5 percent of female votes went to the socialist party, which represented 39 percent of the total votes that the party attained. The Nasserite party gained 2 percent of the women’s votes, which represented 39 percent of the party’s total.

Voting for parties is not based entirely on their programs. It is right that women in the Yemeni society have a negative view of the extremist religious powers and their rigid stance toward women. However, votes are also affected by other issues. The presence of women in these parties affects the distribution of votes. For example, women represent 31 percent of GPC members, which may account for its popularity among women voters. In the GPC’s General Committee, women represent 12.8 percent of its members, and 9.1 percent of its Permanent Committee.

In the Islah Shura Council, women represent 9.1 percent, and in its General Secretariat they represent 6.3 percent of the total members. Women represent 9.01 percent of the total members in the Socialist Party’s Central Committee, and 10.52 percent in the General Secretariat.

IRIN

SANAA, 20 January 2009 (IRIN) – The maternal mortality rate (MMR) remains high as a result of poor health care and harmful social practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation, a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official in Yemen has said.

“Maternal mortality is very high in Yemen. Some 360 women die per 100,000 live births and that figure could be higher,” said Naseem Ur-Rehman, UNICEF’s chief information officer in Yemen, at a press briefing on 18 January to launch the State of the World’s Children 2009 report.

Eight women or girls die from pregnancy or childbirth complications every day in Yemen, he said; globally the figure is 1,500.

According to the UNICEF report, the lifetime risk of maternal death in Yemen is 1:39, making it the highest in the Middle East.

At the same time Yemen has the lowest percentage of births in the Middle East at which a skilled attendant is present: Delivery care coverage is 36 percent, and 24 percent of births take place in hospitals.

The report said a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that female genital mutilation/cutting, which is widespread in rural areas, affected the reproductive health of women: It caused severe pain, prolonged bleeding, infection, infertility and even death.

The report defines maternal mortality as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of the pregnancy’s termination, regardless of the site or duration of the pregnancy, from any cause related to, or aggravated by, the pregnancy or its management”.

Shortage of health workers

UNICEF’s Ur-Rehman said the lack of health workers was one of the reasons for the high MMR and neonatal mortality rates, adding that Yemen was among 57 countries where “the shortage of health workers is acute”.

“Worldwide, there is a shortage of 4.3 million health workers who provide care at the time of pregnancy and delivery,” he said, adding that there should be a minimum of 2.28 health workers per 1,000 people.

Yemeni health officials estimate there is one doctor per 10,000 people and that health services reach only 60 percent of the country’s 21 million people.

Child marriages

Ur-Rehman said child marriage, which aggravates high fertility rates by giving girls a longer period in which to have children, added to the risks.

“Yemen faces this problem of child marriages. There are a large number of child marriages and they ultimately contribute to the deaths of children,” he said.

Nabil Mohammed al-Ammari, executive director of the Yemeni Family Care Association, said lack of awareness about family planning and reproductive health care services also translated into a higher MMR.

He said his association carried out a survey in 2007 in 15 of the 21 governorates on the use of family planning methods and found that people preferred not to use them for fear of possible side effects.

Al-Ammari said social attitudes also had an impact on MMR. “A father of four or five daughters would love to have a boy even at the cost of having many children,” he said.

According to UNICEF’s Ur-Rehman, three things can reduce the high MMR: better community and family support for pregnant women; comprehensive health insurance to cover the costs associated with pregnancy, child birth and post-natal care; and the setting up of establishments where pregnant women from remote areas can go for advice and help prior to their due date.

“Many of these women who are dying are too poor to get to health facilities. Some families take the mother to hospital, but she turns out to be dead on arrival,” he said.

To view this clip, visit MEMRI

“Women Are Subject to Menstruation, When Their Endurance and Mental Capacity for Concentration Are Diminished”

Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani: “Allah said, with regard to women bearing witness: ‘If two men are not available, then a man and two women, such as you choose as witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her.’ Some heretics – communists and other atheists – ridiculed [this verse], saying: How come a man’s testimony equals that of two women? They used this to mock [the Muslims].

“The Muslims used to respond that women are subject to menstruation, when their endurance and mental capacity for concentration are diminished. When a woman witnesses a killing or an accident, she becomes frightened, moves away, and sometimes even faints, and she cannot even watch the incident. [...]

“The American Time magazine, in its July 31, 1995 issue, published this picture from research about the brain functioning of men and women. This is the ma… This is the female brain, and this is an image of the male brain. What do we see? We find that in the case of women, this area… And there is another here…

“Two areas in a woman’s brain are activated when she talks. As we can see, there are many centers of speech in a woman’s brain. There is a center in each lobe, while in the case of a man, there is only one center, here. The opposite center does not operate during speech, because it is busy remembering.”

“When a Woman Talks, She Might Use the Part of the Brain Containing the Memory for Talking – And That’s It, The Data is Lost”

“Both men and women have centers for speech and for memory. In the case of men, the center for speech is here, while the center for memory is here. When a man talks, his center for speech is active, and when he remembers something, his center for memory is active. On the other hand, when a woman wants to talk, she puts both centers into action. This may give us an explanation why women are more talkative.

“What is the outcome of this? When a woman talks, she uses the part of the brain that contains the memory, because in the case of women, both centers function for speech and memory. So when a woman talks, she might use the part of the brain containing the memory for talking – and that’s it, the data is lost.

“Therefore, if we need the testimony of women in cases pertaining to human lives, property, honor, or the stability of justice, we must take into consideration this fact of life in the nature of women.”

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.