Exclusion of women from Yemen peace process ‘hampers long-term solution’

Activists demand women working on front line with humanitarian work be heard

A woman holds a child as she sits near other children outside a cave where a Yemeni family has sought refuge due to poverty and lack of housing, west of the suburbs of Yemen's third city of Taez. AFP

Women wait to receive supplemental nutrition shakes at malnutrition treatment ward of al-Sabeen hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. Reuters

Yemeni women pick the rounded flesh leaves of Ghulaf to use as a main meal at the mountain village of Bani al-Qallam, some 100 km south west of Sanaa, Yemen. EPA

Women and a boy wait for foodstuff assistance vouchers at an aid distribution center in Sanaa, Yemen. Reuters

Yemeni women walk past shops in the old city market of the capital Sanaa. AFP

Women sit with their children receiving treatment at al-Sabeen Maternity and Child Hospital in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. AFP

Yemeni women commute on donkeys carrying jerrycans of water at a camp for internally displaced people by conflict in the northern Hajjah province. AFP

Failure to include women in Yemen’s peace process is reducing the chances of a long-term sustainable solution to the country’s civil war, activists say.

Muna Luqman, executive director of the humanitarian organisation Food4Humanity, said women often carried out urgent response to relief demands.

Often they work on the front lines, call for ceasefires, mediate between armed groups, urge accountability and justice, and operate under challenging conditions that put them under threat.

Forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government get into position during clashes with Houthi rebel fighters in Yemen's north-eastern province of Marib. AFP

Forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government get into position during clashes with Houthi rebel fighters in Yemen's north-eastern province of Marib. AFP

Forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government get into position during clashes with Houthi rebel fighters in Yemen's north-eastern province of Marib. AFP

Forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government get into position during clashes with Houthi rebel fighters in Yemen's north-eastern province of Marib. AFP

A Yemeni boy looks at smoke billowing above a neighborhood following Saudi-led airstrikes targeting positions in Sana'a, Yemen. EPA

Smoke billows during clashes between forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government and Houthi rebel fighters in Yemen's north-eastern province of Marib. AFP

Smoke rises after Saudi-led airstrikes on an army base in Sanaa, Yemen. AP Photo

“Women’s organisations are underfunded, they are not recognised in the peace tracks,” Ms Luqman told an online seminar organised by the European Council on Foreign Relations to look at the role of women seeking peace in Yemen.

“Women are not only speaking about women’s issues, they are reflecting the whole needs of the community and they’re also working to prevent more violence.

“If we are not including women, that means that we’re really not serious about real, core, sustainable peace."

Rasha Jarhum, founder of the Peace Track Initiative, which works towards peace and amplifying the voices of women and children, said that even before Yemen’s civil war it was talked about as the worst country for women.

“Violence against women is embedded in the laws, in discriminative laws and institutions and also in negative social norms that discriminate against women,” Ms Jarhum said.

“The war today has made violations and abuse against women and girls reach a level that we have never witnessed before.

"Yemeni women are targeted in their homes, in schools, in the markets, in hospitals, in their farms.

“Yemeni women – political leaders and activists and humanitarian workers and peace-builders – are also targeted for their work in public life.

"They are detained, they are tortured, they are raped."

She said women had often borne the brunt of the war, but were excluded from the peace and diplomatic process, which is something her organisation was trying to change.