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Gender alert as UK-supplied bombs hit Yemen

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genderalertEven before the civil war, Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East.

Since March 2015, open conflict amongst rival factions has spread across Yemen, culminating in the on-going Saudi-led coalition’s bombing of targets in Houthi-controlled sections of the country.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported that 21.1 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, including 1.26 million internally displaced people.

The full extent of the humanitarian crisis in the Yemen, where the UK is helping to arm Saudi planes attacking rebel targets, emerged as a five-day ceasefire to allow aid workers access to some of the worst affected areas was broken within minutes by shelling from both sides, the Independent reported on 28 July.

According to the Independent, the British defence minister, Earl Howe, confirmed that the UK was providing arms to Saudi Arabia that are being used in Yemen.

“We are not participating directly in Saudi-led military operations in Yemen, but we are providing technical support, precision-guided weapons and exchanging information with the Saudi Arabian armed forces through pre-existing arrangements,” he said in a Parliamentary written answer.

“We have a small number of liaison personnel in Saudi and coalition air and maritime headquarters.

“This includes personnel in the maritime coalition co-ordination centre in the region supporting the delivery of humanitarian aid into Yemen.”

But even before the civil war, Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East and had the world’s second highest malnutrition rate.

Now, in the Saada region in the north of Yemen, Oxfam warns that 80 per cent of the population – at least 670,000 people – are going hungry, with 50 per cent of them at critical levels.

And according to a new Gender Alert on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, approximately 20 to 30 per cent of displaced households are female headed, an increase from about nine per cent before the current crisis.

This is due in large part to many men and boys having been recruited to fight, injured or killed.

UNFPA estimates 2.6 million women of reproductive age have been affected by the crisis, including approximately 257,000 pregnant women.

Prior to the current crisis, only 45 per cent of deliveries were attended by skilled medical professionals – due in large part to a lack of females killed birth attendants in rural areas. However, with disruption to normal health service provision – and a further decrease in female health workers – this is likely to worsen further.

An estimated 15 per cent of the pregnant women (38,550) will suffer some form of maternal or obstetric complications and they will face an increased risk that these complications will become life-threatening as they will have difficulty accessing professional medical care.

Women have also lost access to family planning, exposing them to potential unplanned pregnancies in perilous conditions.

And as with any humanitarian crisis, the risk of sexual abuse and exploitation by either humanitarian actors, security forces, host community members, armed actors and others is high in Yemen.

Added to this, a further new alert from the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Reference Group on Gender in Humanitarian Action, reports that 10,500 refugees and migrants have arrived in Yemen by sea since the beginning of the ongoing conflict – primarily from Ethiopia and Somalia, and fleeing there in the mistaken belief that the conflict was over.

Those making the sea crossings – and particularly women and girls – are vulnerable to abduction, attacks, drowning, exploitation and sexual assault.

Women are disproportionately affected by the current crisis because of restrictions of mobility, decision making power and a lack of access to and control over resources.

They also have poor access to information, whether it is regarding their rights or helpful information such as hygiene promotion material.

But insecurity, a lack of access and shifting regional and tribal variations of gender equality, mean that a detailed picture of the current plight of crisis affected women and girls across the country has yet to be established.

The Gender Alert emphasises how essential it is that the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank’s planned damage and loss assessment (and any other needs assessment) reflect gender in their scope and analysis and are based on accurate sex and age disaggregated data, so that the needs and vulnerabilities of the women, men, girls and boys of the crisis affected population are adequately identified and addressed.

UN Women, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Women’s Refugee Commission are co-chairs of the IASC Reference Group which is made up of UN and non-UN agencies, NGOs and civil society organisations and promotes the integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment in global humanitarian efforts.

You can read the full gender alert ‘Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen Gender Alert: July 2015’ here.

You could also forward it to your MP – whose contact details can be found here – so you can be sure they know the effect of UK-supplied military ‘support’ on civilian society.

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