We are born like white papers and everyone has pens to write their letters on us, their letters vary according to the doctor’s good news for them. If you are a male, your papers will be filled with terms of strength and arrogance that may reach the point of tyranny, and if you are a girl, you will have plenty of luck from words of weakness and humiliation.
In your fourth year you won't feel it on your way to school with your male brother, but by the age of ten and beyond you will have a black headscarf to put on your head just because you're a girl. You will ask yourself why? What is wrong with me being a girl, your father will reply because you are a girl God has imposed on you, religion and customs. But I'm young! Yes, but Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, got married when she was younger than your age. You will reach legal puberty and to issue proof of your identity will require the presence of your guardian because you are a girl. Who said that? The law, my dear, who made this law and where did it come from? From Islamic Sharia, the text of Article 3 of the Yemeni Constitution states that Islamic Sharia is the source of all legislation.
What is the doctrine that you resort to in light of religious differences? We judge what corresponds to our masculine minds, our tribal nature, and our sadistic authority.
This is what it means to be a Yemeni girl, a Yemeni woman, and an elderly Yemeni woman. It is not just a criticism that has been said, but rather an insult that is borne by the provisions of the articles of Yemeni law, authoritarian practices, and judicial rulings.
Prelude to injustice
This starts from childhood. The first legal text in which the girl is discriminated against is the text of the article specifying the age of the child when choosing between the parents after divorce. While the boy has the right to choose at the age of nine, the girl does not have it until she reaches the age of twelve. There is no clear justification for this discrimination, other than that she is a girl, and this is what Article (139) of the Personal Status Law stipulates: the custody period is nine years for a male and twelve years for a female, unless the judge decides otherwise in the interest of the child under custody. What's the difference between a nine-year-old boy and a girl the same age, why do they see her as having no choice?
The girl then grows up to reach the age of fifteen, and the law states in Article (15) of the Yemeni Personal Status Law: “It is not permissible to marry off a young child, whether male or female, without reaching fifteen years of age.”
Ages have been passed for this text of law and it was time to be amended, however, while the amendment is supposed to criminalize the old text by determining the age of marriage at least to eighteen years old to prevent the marriage of minors, the new law came up with see that the marriage of a young girl is valid after she is qualified for intercourse in the text of the article after Amendment: “The marriage contract of the young woman shall be valid, and the person to whom she is contracted cannot practice any sexual relationship with her and she is not married to him unless she is fit for sexual intercourse, even if she is over fifteen years old, and the marriage contract is not valid for the young person except for a proven interest.” Why was the definition of marriage canceled and who determines the girl's validity for intercourse or not?
Moreover, the discrimination extends in the texts of Yemeni law even in its definition of marriage, as it was defined in the text of Article (6) of the Personal Status Law that marriage is a bond between two spouses with a legal covenant by which the woman sexually legalizes to the man, and its goal is to establish a family of good relations. Why use "Woman's legalizes to the Man"? Is marriage only to be sexually legalizes to the man and for him only?
Even when marrying, Article (7) stipulates that: “Marriage takes place in one sitting by the offer of an adult male who is not a mahram, with a word that indicates marriage according to custom, and the acceptance of the same person before the rejection, and the offer and acceptance must be accomplished and not indicative of the timing, and every condition that does not relate to the purpose of one of the spouses is cancelled". That is, the male alone has the right approve her marriage and she is not entitled to be married by herself, and this is a controversial matter even in the doctrines of Islamic Sharia, which are the source of Yemeni law.
So to which denomination the Yemeni law belongs? Who resolved controversial matters in Islamic sects to make up legal articles out of them? When we come to the question about her will and her consent to complete this marriage, the text of Article (23) of the Personal Status Law says: “The consent of the woman is required, the consent of the virgin is her silence, and the sign of the consent of a non-virgin is her utterance.”
While there is a common rule that “No saying can be attributed to a silent person”. However, the Yemeni law considered the silence of the virgin girl as consent! Considering this as evidence of the shyness that she was placed behind the door of the men's sitting room while they decide her fate and her life for her!
So the girl will marry with this silence, and after she got married, the husband tweets that Sharia and law allow him to marry four women, as Article 12 stipulates:
Regardless of the absolute discrimination in this article, it was not perfectly matches the desire of the drafters of Yemeni law, so they decided to amend it by deleting the last paragraph, which is the paragraph about informing the wife, as they see that there is no need to inform her of the desire of her husband to marry a second wife as long as he grants her financial sufficiency!
The legal articles amendments continued by deleting some good articles including Article 71 of the Personal Status Law which reads: “If a man divorces his wife and the judge finds that the husband was abusive in his divorce without a reasonable justification, and that the wife is likely to thus be subjected to misery and poverty, the judge may order a financial compensation to be paid by her ex-husband according to the condition and degree of his arbitrariness so that the compensation does not exceed the amount of a year’s alimony for the likes of her in addition to the alimony of the waiting period, and the judge may order that this compensation be paid in whole or monthly, as the case requires!
By deleting this article, women were deprived of the right to compensation because of arbitrary divorce, and there is no clear justification for this type of amendment. Instead of boosting fairness and enacting texts that upsurge the protection of Yemeni women from the abuse that they may be subject to, we find that the law continues to unfairly deprive divorced women from this right.
As for after the divorce, the Yemeni law has neglected any rights for the divorced woman. Rather, in the event the husband refrains from the payment of alimony before the divorce, the wife receives only alimony for one year prior to the judicial claim, and this is what is stated in the text of Article (156) of the Status Personal law: “The wife shall not be judged for more than one year’s alimony prior to the judicial claim, unless the spouses agree otherwise.” What if the interruption of the husband’s alimony to his wife exceeded one year and extended for years? How she will be compensated?
Even if a woman dies, the law continues to pursue her after her death in order to make her blood money half that of a man! This is what Article (41) of the Crimes and Penalties Law stipulates: “The blood money of a woman is half that of a man, and her indemnity is the same as that of a man, up to a third of the blood money of a man, and half of what exceeds, and in determining the type of injury depends on a report from a specialized doctor or people of experience. And if the injury is prolonged or became beyond the indemnity of the wound, then the judgment is according to what the court deems appropriate.”
Violating logic
The texts that are unfair to the rights and dignity of Yemeni women are not only against Sharia and justice, but also against logic. So where is the logic in making the blood money of a woman half that of a man, and here we return again to the question that as long as Islamic Sharia is the source of Yemeni law, then what is the source of the texts that are still subject to controversy and disagreement so far among the doctrines of Sharia? Knowing that Yemeni law was not based on a particular sect in its laws, but rather its texts taken from Islamic Sharia with its various sects.
Injustice increases the legalization limit for a man to kill his wife or his ascendants and descendants according to the text of Article (232) of the Crimes and Penalties Law: “If the husband kills his wife and whoever commits adultery with her while they are in the act of fornication, or if he assaults them in an assault that leads to death or disability, then there is no retribution for that whereas the husband’s punishment shall be limited to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or a fine, and the same ruling applies to anyone who surprises one of his ascendants, descendants, or sisters in the act of adultery."
If Yemeni law takes Islamic Sharia as a source for its texts; Why the law had not based here on the provisions of Sharia? Where is the oath of condemnation between spouses mentioned in the Sharia? Where is the application of the adultery penalty on the married woman? Why would it transcend its supreme source to allow a man to kill her with impunity? which discretionary penalty that does not exceed a year? Why is a woman considered a commodity owned by her guardian and her husband after marriage, who have the power of injustice to the point of murder and under the protection of the law!
Restricted inheritance
With regard to women’s inheritance, and although their share in the inheritance is restricted to the fact that the woman’s share is half the share of the man’s inheritance, the social reality prevents her from obtaining even this limit of inheritance, and despite the fact that Islamic Sharia provided some justifications to respond to why men and women are not equal in the inheritance such as that the woman remains under the care of the man, and he is obliged to pay for her expenses if he was her brother or husband, meaning that she is always dependent and the male is the breadwinner for her.
Nevertheless, an important question comes to mind: What if the brother does not pay any of his sister's expenses? Is it not possible for these legal justifications to vanish by logic and it shall be fair that they both have equal rights of inheritance?
Even with the availability of a legal text on the obligatory will, one-third of the inheritance is given to the children of the deceased boy before the bequeathed to him and to the children of the girl as well. However, the Yemeni judiciary does not give this right to the daughter’s children and only gives it to the son’s children!
Law and judge
It shall be noticed that injustice inflicted on women in Yemeni society is covered and protected by the texts of its laws, and even legal texts that may be just for Yemeni women are often not judged and adhered to by the Yemeni judiciary, which in turn gives Yemeni law a discretionary power to rule on the facts before it. If the texts of the law are fair to women, the judge who believes that he has the right to assess the injustice inflicted on her will not do justice to her. In sum, Yemeni women are faced with three possibilities: either the law explicitly violates their rights in light of unfair texts, or the law is completely silent about the statement of the legal text and the punishment for many crimes committed against women, (such as marital rape, incest rape and violations issued by male family members under the justification of honor) and the last possibility is that she will have to stand before the judiciary without a legal text on which she can refer to and she must face a masculine mentality that adapts the facts to server their masculinity and blame the woman, and this is what happened in many incidents of incest rape that some Yemeni women were exposed to, where rape is adapted as incest and thus, the woman turns from a victim to a perpetrator. There is no acknowledgment of the existence of marital rape as long as the woman, according to the marriage contract, has made it permissible for her husband to have sex in any way he wants! In the judicial rulings, there are clear examples of the marginalization and unfairness of Yemeni women and their rights and dignity, and this is what we touch and hear every day in the courtyards of Yemeni courts. Moreover, there are Yemeni women's issues that have become issues of public concern, but over time the authorities have remained deaf to everything related to women or improving the status of women and supporting their protection.
Who is the enemy of the Yemeni woman and who is her protector? Whom she shall suit first? Law or judiciary? In front of whom shall she complain and to whom? When will the Yemeni woman obtain protection first to be her protective shield to obtain all her rights?
