The International Human Rights Clinic Supports International Advocacy to Advance Rights of Women in Yemen

By Salma Waheedi, via Human Rights@Harvard Law

The Musawah Movement for Equality in the Muslim Family submitted a thematic report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), advocating for effective legal reforms to prevent violence against women and to end gender-based discrimination in Yemen’s personal status laws. 

The report is a product of an ongoing collaboration between the International Human Rights Clinic, Musawah, and Yemeni women’s rights advocates. Shaza Loutfi, HLS ’22, worked closely with Musawah researchers and Yemeni advocates to draft the report and develop its analysis and recommendations, under the supervision of IHRC Clinical Instructor Salma Waheedi. The report will be considered by the CEDAW Committee in its constructive dialogue with the Government of Yemen, scheduled to take place remotely on October 27^th, 2021, as part of the Committee’s upcoming session. 

The report examines Yemen’s legal framework and practices that enforce de jure and de facto discrimination against Yemeni Muslim women in five priority areas: child marriage, forced marriage, violence against women, inheritance rights, and nationality rights. Taking into account the ongoing devastating conflict in Yemen and its current political instability, it aims to document the most pressing issues, legal and practical, that affect the lives of Yemeni women in the private and family spheres, and to offer recommendations to guide the CEDAW Committee’s engagement with the Government of Yemen.   

Member states to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women are required to undergo regular reviews by the Committee of 23 independent international experts on how they are implementing the Convention.