Now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has. ~ Tawakkol Karman

Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a Middle Eastern country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. The current president of Yemen is Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Quotes

The conditions in Yemen are very difficult. ~ Khaled Mahfoudh Bahah

• We are supporting Saudi Arabia while they inflict unthinkable human rights violations on the Yemeni people. Congress must do its job and stop providing military support and arm sales to the Saudi government.
  • Ro Khanna in a Twitter post (2 January 2019)

• What it actually reveals is a far darker, more shameful truth. The truth of a Saudi-led coalition armed by Britain and the United States, which from the very start of the conflict in 2015 has sought to use starvation as a weapon of war. Most obviously, their on-off blockades of any ports and airports controlled by the Houthi rebels have drastically cut supplies of food to a Yemini population that relies on imports to eat. But far more insidiously, and in the absence of imports, the Saudi air force has systematically and deliberately destroyed the domestic means of producing and distributing food inside Yemen. Their bombs have constantly targeted agricultural land, dairy farms, food processing factories, and the markets where food is sold.
  • Emily Thornberry in The famine facing Yemen is a war crime – it must be investigated, The Guardian, (22 November 2018)

• We need accountability for the states and individuals that have caused this crisis, brought us to the brink of a famine that the UN says would be the worst in the past 100 years, and – by using starvation as a weapon of war – are in clear breach of international humanitarian law...When I asked Jeremy Hunt yesterday in parliament why the resolution that will go before the security council today did not mention the need for an investigation of all alleged war crimes, and full accountability for those responsible, and whether the crown prince (of Saudi Arabia) had insisted on the removal of that demand, he did not answer.
  • Emily Thornberry in The famine facing Yemen is a war crime – it must be investigated, The Guardian, (22 November 2018)

• The conditions in Yemen are very difficult. We are now working in this post-liberation period, we have implemented a new strategy and stayed as a government in Sanaa. We came under attack when a hotel was bombarded and we were in a lot of danger but now, our strategy is to ensure our presence throughout Yemen.
  • Khaled Mahfoudh Bahah, vice president and prime minister of Yemen, talking about the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, as quoted in "Yemen PM tells Dubai summit military intervention was ‘necessary’" in The National (9 February 2016)

• On NPR... there is barely a mention of the refugee crisis emanating from Yemen. And, this is a big omission, for as the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has recently reported, Yemen had more people displaced last year due to conflict than any other country on earth. Thus, 2.2 million people were displaced by the armed conflict in Yemen in 2015, a figure which accounts for over 25% of the 8.6 million people displaced around the globe due to conflict last year. In addition to Yemen’s refugee crisis, the IDMC also notes that over 14 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation as a result of the current conflict.
  • Daniel Kovalik in NPR, Yemen & The Downplaying of U.S. War Crimes, Huffington Post(25 May 2016)

• ...The only discussion I have found that NPR gave to Yemen in the context of the world refugee crisis was one, solitary piece back on May 11, and that piece was very telling in what it refused to say about the causes for Yemen’s mass displacement problem... The result of this disproportionate news coverage is that the listener could very well miss out entirely on any discussion of such issues as U.S.-backed crimes in Yemen. And, even if one does hear a segment or two on this matter, this issue will be easily forgotten and certainly not taken as seriously or treated as urgently as the misdeeds of the U.S.’s ostensible enemies, such as Syria’s Assad government, to which NPR gives nearly obsessive attention.
• In this way, we in the U.S., who may otherwise be moved to care about the fate of millions in Yemen whose lives are being upended with our own government’s complicity, are lulled into complacency, with our comfortable feeling about our nation’s inherent goodness fully intact. The result is that those in power in our ostensibly democratic government are given a free hand to aid and abet such atrocities as the near-total destruction of Yemen without the fear of any reprisal or approbation.
  • Daniel Kovalik in NPR, Yemen & The Downplaying of U.S. War Crimes, Huffington Post(25 May 2016)

• The Yemen Republic is an exotic mix of mountains, deserts, frequently rebellious tribesmen and guns. Maybe 16 million of them are in circulation.
  • Brian Barron, in "Yemen's tenuous grip on stability" BBC News (24 November 2007)

• Piety prevails today. Yemen seems in the grip of an almost feverish bout of mosque building.
  One Sanaa columnist reckons 50,000 mosques have risen across the nation, compared with 12,000 new schools.
  • Brian Barron, in "Yemen's tenuous grip on stability" BBC News (24 November 2007)

• Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has.
  • Tawakkol Karman, as quoted in "Renowned activist and press freedom advocate Tawakul Karman to the Yemen Times: 'A day will come when all human rights violators pay for what they did to Yemen.'", in Yemen Times (3 November 2011)

External links