The Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen

While gender inequality was still a prominent issue in Yemeni society before the conflict, there is no question that the current situation has exacerbated the poor conditions faced by women, men, girls, and boys.

Abundant criticism has been raised regarding the efficiency of humanitarian aid to Yemen. Humanitarian aid is claimed to not adequately meet the needs of Yemeni society, but it remains pivotal to the survival of the people. By looking at three main areas humanitarian aid can address, this gender analysis aims to provide takeaways to help non-governmental organizations better understand the needs of different groups and address them accordingly.

Yemeni society is incredibly traditional in terms of the social norms surrounding femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. These extremely traditional views are exacerbated by a government that reinforces them with its laws and policies. The humanitarian crisis has perpetuated the gendered expectations placed on every group of society. Women are expected to care for children and the home, men are expected to provide. Boys and girls are valued not as children, but as marriage prospects. Sexual minorities' lives are basically non-existent.

In a conflict like the Yemeni Civil War, women's role as child-bearers and homemakers becomes disproportionately more difficult because of the expectations they face and their sex-specific biological needs. One of the major problems of the Yemeni civil war is the severe water and food insecurity that affects over half the country. For women and unborn children, this is especially devastating because of the increased need for water during menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding (Kayser, et.al, 2019). Furthermore, with the unclean water and lack of basic sanitation in Yemen, pre-term labor, low birth weight, high infant mortality rates, and infections are rising.

Beyond the effects of water scarcity, collecting water is a key aspect of how Yemeni women perform their roles as the caretakers of their homes and families. 61 to 79% of women are the main water suppliers for their families and communities, a responsibility that leads to a number of detrimental health effects (Pouramin et. al., 2020). The most direct effects are from the physical burden of carrying the heavy loads - this can cause spinal injury, neck pain, spontaneous abortion, and increased caloric expenditure (Kayser, et.al, 2019). These health issues, in turn, hamper their ability to provide water and therefore make them feel less secure in performing their obligations as a woman. Along with these direct effects, there has been a Cholera outbreak in the country which is believed to be one of the worst in modern history. The outbreak has caused an estimated 1.2 million infections 3,000 deaths over 10 years from 2009 to 2019 (Ng et.al, 2020). The outbreak has disproportionately affected women because of their roles in water collection, which has been devastating to maternal health. These health hazards include increased rates of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, and maternal mortality.

All of these issues are worsened by the fact that women rank the lowest on the societal ladder in Yemen. Women are seen as below men (at the top) and children (in the middle). This, combined with their caretaker role, means that they are expected to feed their husband and children first. Women being the last in the family to eat has resulted in female malnutrition on a level higher than almost anywhere else in the world. Pregnant and breastfeeding women have increased nutritional needs because they physically aid children in proper development. 1.3 million malnourished women in Yemen means a generation of children will be born with low birth weights, malnourishment, and other health complications ("Yemen Emergency"). There are also 2.2 million children under the age of 5 suffering from acute malnourishment, which causes high rates of mortality. In Yemeni society, children are also not valued as people - they are only seen as potential resources. Boys are potential workers who can go out and bring in money and resources to the family, while girls are potential dowry and thereby a means to lessen the water and food load on the family.

The Yemeni healthcare system has also suffered greatly in the conflict because of damage to facilities and a lack of healthcare workers. Only about half of all healthcare facilities are functional and those that are functional remain difficult to access ("In Yemen's Man-Made Catastrophe, Women and Girls Pay the Price | | UN News"). Citizens often have to cross enemy lines or pass through multiple security checkpoints just to get to the nearest hospital or primary care clinic. When they finally get to a facility, it is often understaffed. The staff that remain are often undertrained, meaning that they do not necessarily know the most efficient way to treat someone. Because healthcare-related resources are so scarce in Yemen, only about 20% of operational facilities have any maternal or children's services. This means that women and children have less access to necessary health services than men. This disproportionate healthcare access means that a Yemeni woman dies in childbirth every 2 hours - this has led to a maternal mortality rate of 164 per 100,000 ("USAID Yemen Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: Fact Sheet: Yemen"). Additionally, for every woman who dies during childbirth, another 20 suffer injuries, infections or disabilities that are preventable. These negative health outcomes occur so frequently because 60% of births in Yemen occur without any medical professional trained in birth practices there to recongize potential complications.

Humanitarian aid has unfortunately fallen far behind the level of help that the people of Yemen need. Aid is often specifically aimed at supporting women and girls because of the assumption that men are more likely to be combatants. This means that women and girls are more directly affected by a reduction in aid. In 2020, more than 80 out of 180 UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund)-supported health facilities closed due to lack of funding (UNFPA 2021). This reduced funding meant that an additional million women lost access to critical healthcare in 2020. However, UNFPA projects were still able to provide life-saving reproductive care and other healthcare services to over 3 million women in the same year.

Another effect of the conflict in Yemen has been the increase of women in a traditionally male-dominated workforce. This may seem like progress, but it isn't necessarily a good thing. Women still experience significant wage inequality, are excluded from many jobs, and have trouble starting businesses due to a lack of access to bank funding (Al-Ammar & Patchett 2019). One of the most important changes this shift has caused is not actually in the labor market, but in the home. As more women become breadwinners, men must increasingly participate in home management tasks to balance out disparities in labor. However, employers do not see workers as equal. They lay off more women than men because of the traditional expectation for men to be the breadwinners for their families. This relative job instability makes women-led families less secure in terms of income. The proportional decrease of men in the workforce also increases domestic conflict because of the frustration many men feel when they are not able to fulfill their expected role as the primary provider for the family. Despite some improvements in education equality, women still drop out of the education system at very high rates and therefore have less access to 'skilled' jobs.

Sexual minorities have essentially no right to life in Yemen. Homosexuality is criminalized, with penalties ranging from prison sentences to death by stoning (Mohammed 2016). Because people face severe consequences for being openly homosexual in Yemen, there is little to no data on LGBTQ individuals in the country. Unmarried individuals are also a minority in Yemen as a result of the traditional value placed on marriage. This makes it more difficult to access aid for unmarried individuals. The detrimental effects of this and the differences from group to group are pervasive, but are a few of the most significant and easiest to see.

“Power over” is a conception of power in which certain individuals systematically hold authority over another and gain from this relationship (Institute of Development Studies). In Yemen, the power dynamics between men and women are clear. Women are responsible for the procurement of water, but their participation in the household for the management of water resources and allocation is low (Kayser et al. 2019). This means that women and young people are increasingly putting themselves at risk to open humanitarian corridors for their families to bring water and food home (Colburn 2020). However, women are the last in a family to eat and drink, meaning that they bear the brunt of the effects of food and water scarcity. An increasing number of women in the workforce has also forced men to participate more in household tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children (Nasser 2017). But this change in the distribution of familial roles has done little in the way of reframing societal ideals of who should be doing these tasks - in these cases, men do household tasks only out of necessity.

While Yemen’s entire healthcare system is under serious strain, only 20% of Yemen’s operational facilities provide any maternal or child health services (UN 2021). The lack of urgency placed on the importance of female and maternal health means that millions of women and girls in Yemen are left without access to potentially life-saving reproductive and maternal health care (UN 2021). 60% of births occur without a skilled birth attendant who knows how to identify and respond to the signs of possible health complications (UNFPA 2021). Humanitarian aid has been largely underfunded, which prevents the prioritization of reproductive and maternal health care to women, who are seen as the lowest social fabric of Yemeni society.

The roles of men and women in the labor market, however, have shifted somewhat during the conflict. While this might seem progressive to some, the presence of women in Yemen’s labor market has done little to actually increase the value placed on women in society. Women in Yemen have established new enterprises and engaged in poorly-paid physical work in response to the loss of the male labor force, but the economic collapse of the country originally affected working women more than their male counterparts (Al-Ammar and Patchett 2019). The law in Yemen does not mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value, and does not prohibit the dismissal of pregnant women (Council on Foreign Relations 2022) despite the fact that many women have become the breadwinners of their families in recent years (Nasser 2017). In Sana’a, many employers resisted laying off male employees but were quick to fire female employees because of the assumption that men are the breadwinners of the family (Nasser 2017). Many humanitarian aid organizations have attempted to increase women's economic independence through supporting women’s businesses (USAID), but women in Yemen often do not have access to bank accounts. This negatively affects their ability to recieve money from investments (Al-Ammar and Patchett 2019). This shift in the performance of traditionally gender-specific familial roles takes a particular toll on men, who experience frustration over not being able to provide for their families. This frustration then manifests in the form of increased domestic conflict (Al-Ammar and Patchett 2019).

Perhaps the most important power structure presence in Yemeni society is the complete erasure of queer identities, which negates the existence of the LGBT community in Yemen. This power dynamic severely impacts the gendered effects felt by queer minorities – they are completely ignored and their unique needs are not addressed. Homosexuality is illegal in Yemen, which means that no LGBT non-governmental organization operates out of the country. The lack of comprehensive sexuality education in Yemen (WHO 2021) means that those participating in same-sex relations are at risk of not being adequately prepared for the health risks. They are discouraged from seeking help such as counseling and HIV testing out of fear of being discovered and punished for homosexuality (Mohammed 2016). Therefore, the disincentives to seek help for LGBT-specific issues means that sexual minorities in Yemen are the most at risk of being overlooked and ignored.

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