Gender, Development and Governance in Yemen, 20 Years On
17 Jun 2010 in Education, Employment, Marriage, Civic Participation, Social Exclusion
Diana Greenwald interviews Raufa Hassan al-Sharki on the importance of human development and transparent governance in Yemen, with a special focus on the country's young women and girls.
Editor's Note: Following the 20 year anniversary of North-South unification in Yemen (May 22), the Middle East Youth Initiative spoke with Raufa Hassan al-Sharki about a wide range of issues pertaining to Yemen’s development. Al-Sharki is the president of the Cultural Development Projects Planning Foundation and professor of Media and Gender Studies at Sana’a University. Listen to excerpts of this interview.
Middle East Youth Initiative (MEYI): This month, Yemen celebrates 20 years since unification. Having been one of the primary observers of Yemen’s development over the past years, what are the major social and economic achievements you have seen in the country? Also, what challenges remain in achieving more equitable development? A very big question.
Raufa Hassan al-Sharki: It is. Actually, thinking of 20 years of challenges, I believe that they are now arriving to their peaks. The unification was a unification between two systems of states that are different. To make that marriage into one system acceptable by both was not an easy task. Of course, several other problems have arrived because of that – the first war erupted in 1994 and other regional issues were already persistent, like what happened in the Gulf. Close to 1 million Yemeni migrants had to return to Yemen. These people were responsible [for] financing families that varied from four to five people at least per person, so we are talking about almost 6 million Yemenis who have been affected directly by the returning of these people. So the new state had to face its own internal difficulties with these people who came back and the difficulties of creating new jobs while not yet handling the old situation.
Also, a lot of political issues were there and continue to be…How [are] we going to [take the]...system that existed in one part of the country and how can that be unified in one system? It took a long time. At the same time, there were other issues that were coming and...will continue... like women’s issues. Unification has come while the issue of Yemeni women had not been solved, neither in the south nor in the north. The southern part had focused on one aspect – it looked like it liberates women legally, but there are a lot of social constraints that have continued there. Beyond the city of Aden, very few [things] have been done for women. The issue of illiteracy was very large and it is still today.
