Arwa Abdel Hamid was stunned when she arrived at the passport office in the city of Taiz, in southwestern Yemen after a 7-hour trip on a rugged road from her hometown.
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“Where is your husband?” the passport office clerk asked her. When she told him that her husband is working in Saudi Arabia, the clerk said she wouldn’t be able to complete her passport application.
“Get an official authorization and come back,” he said.
Abdel Hamid was lucky. She has relatives living in the city of Taiz who helped her get the required document after four days of back-and-forth with a judge, who signed the document when two people stated that they knew her husband.
“The judge took my phone, called my husband’s number, and asked the two witnesses if they recognized his voice. They said they did,” she explained.
Abdel Hamid is one of thousands of Yemeni women have been unable to obtain government documents, including travel documents, without the approval of their husbands. Many resort to bribing government clerks to obtain documents. In March, Human Rights Watch said in a report that warring authorities across Yemen are systematically violating women’s freedom of movement rights. “The authorities are barring women from traveling between governorates, and in some cases from travel abroad, without a male guardian’s permission or being accompanied by an immediate male relative,” the report said.
Permission is a must
The report cites an activist living in Aden, who says that “even though what [women] had before the war wasn’t great, the women’s movement has regressed more” since the conflict began in 2014.
Over the last decade, Yemen has been split between the internationally recognized government which is based in the southern city of Aden, and the Houthi rebels who control the capital, Sanaa. The country became engulfed in a civil war in 2014, when the Iranian-backed Houthis captured Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government to flee to the south, and then later to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war the next year to try to restore the government to power.
In some cases, even women with a guardian have found it difficult to obtain travel documents.
The war, which deteriorated largely into a stalemate, has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more. Both Houthis and the internationally recognized government don’t issue passports to women without a permission from their husbands – or he himself attends the process and gives his verbal approval. The Houthis barred women from traveling inside Yemen without a guardian, according to United Nations experts.
Such restrictions have dire consequences on women as it impacts their ability to receive health care, education, work and even visit their families. In some cases, even women with a guardian have found it difficult to obtain travel documents.
In January, Al-Fiya Naji, a 45-year-old woman from the countryside of the Ibb Governorate, traveled to Taiz to obtain a passport so she could travel to Saudi Arabia for the Muslim pilgrimage and to visit her sister there. Despite the presence of her husband, as required, she has still not receive her passport. Four months after applying, she is still waiting, like thousands of other Yemenis.
“I have lost my eagerness to travel,” she said, adding that she is concerned she never be able to make her pilgrimage.
Laws vs. social norms
Yemen’s 1990 Passports Law allows all men and women over the age of 16 to obtain a passport — without a guardian. Minors are added to their parents’ passports, according to Aisha Manea, a judge in the province of Marib. Yet passport offices across the country have applied social and tribal customs and norms to the process, and demand the presence of a guardian when women apply to get a travel document.
Bribing clerks is not a solution to this problem, as it can expose women to other abuses, such as harassment and blackmail. For years, feminist organizations have tried to pressure local authorities to review these norms and make their voices heard by decision-makers, public opinion, and local and international organizations.
A Yemeni woman still needs the presence of a man.
In 2022, under mounting pressure, then Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed ordered immigration offices to facilitate the release of passports for women without a guardian. Activist Olfat Al-Dabai said at the time that she had obtained directives from the prime minister that included the abolition of all forms of discrimination against women.
But social and tribal customs have quickly returned. Many women reported that they are still unable to get travel documents without permission from their guardians. A woman from Aden said officials at the immigration office told her that the prime minister’s directives are null, and that she needs a guardian to proceed with her passport application. Cases such as these have pushed activists to revive their campaigns demanding such procedures to be abolished.
Ahmed Al-Baadani, coordinator of the “I want a passport” campaign, said such procedures further burden women and are nonsensical, noting that “A Yemeni woman — even if she is 80 years old — still needs the presence of a man — even if he is 18 years old to get a passport.”
*This report is published by Daraj in cooperation with the “Rural Yemen” press platform, which is interested in publishing news of the Yemeni countryside and the challenges it faces.
