First Yemeni woman appointed to senior judicial post

Yemeni women have voiced their pride over the appointment of the first female judge to the country’s Supreme Judicial Council and demanded more action to narrow the gender gap.

Only a third of women in Yemen are literate, making up less than 2 per cent of the political process and a mere 6 per cent of the labor force, the lowest in the world, according to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index.

The head of the Presidential Council in Yemen, Dr Rashad Al Alimi, issued a decision on August 4, appointing Sabah Al Alwani to the senior judicial post in a country where men have always monopolized decision-making positions.

Yemen was ranked bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index for 13 consecutive years. But despite the continuing war that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 230,000 people since 2014, Yemeni women have achieved remarkable feats in narrowing this gap.

Yemeni women are among those hit hardest by a conflict that has led to what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Beyond suffering from malnutrition and a lack of access to health care, Yemeni women are disproportionately affected by rape and other forms of sexual violence that tend to increase during war.

UN investigators have recently uncovered a pattern of abuse, rape and arbitrary detention against women activists in Houthi-held areas of Yemen, as the rebels impose their extreme ideology on the population.

In a 2021 annual report, a panel of UN experts condemned a “Houthi policy of sexual violence and repression against politically active and professional women” in the capital Sanaa and other parts of Yemen’s rebel-held north.

Yemen is in its eighth year of war since the Houthis took over the capital Sanaa in 2014, and the fighting has left hundreds of thousands of dead and millions more displaced in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.