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- Male guardianship rules in northern Yemen limit women’s aid work
Male guardianship rules in northern Yemen limit women’s aid work
Without female staff in the field, aid groups say they have trouble doing basic services such as identification checks to distribute food
Female aid workers in northern Yemen can’t do their jobs – tackling one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises – as tightening male guardianship rules imposed by the Houthi movement restrict their movement.
Yemeni society, although deeply conservative, has traditionally allowed space for individual freedoms. But that is changing under the Houthi movement, which was founded with the aim of pushing for a theocracy that echoes religious regimes in Iran and Afghanistan.
When women refuse to take a guardian, they cannot travel to oversee aid projects, collect data, or deliver health and other services, female humanitarians told Reuters. When women do take one, they explained, gender-sensitive work is difficult and aid budgets must bear extra costs.
One health project manager normally conducts 15-20 visits a year to initiatives around the country, but said she has not made any since the rules requiring Yemeni female aid workers to be chaperoned by a close male relative – a “mahram” in Arabic – were set in 2022.
“I don’t have a lot of men in my family,” she said, adding that some women struggle to find willing guardians because relatives are against them working. “Sometimes, a woman works without informing someone in her family.”
Yemen’s conflict has divided the country between the Iran-aligned Houthis in the north and an internationally recognized government in the south, supported by a Saudi-led military coalition. The conflict has wrecked the economy and destroyed the health system, leaving two-thirds of the Persian Gulf nation's 30 million population in need of humanitarian assistance.
Aid groups say female-headed households are more vulnerable to food insecurity and difficulties accessing aid. Without female staff in the field, aid groups say they have trouble doing basic services such as identification checks to distribute food.