A nine-year-old girl was playing in a neighborhood of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, where she and her family live. Unbeknownst to her, a man had been watching her and waiting for the right moment to attack. On the morning of June 26, he sexually assaulted her on the second floor of the building where her family resides.
The assault forever altered the lives of the girl and her family, as they embarked on a difficult journey to seek justice. Despite strong evidence and the perpetrator’s confession, it took months for the Specialized Criminal Prosecution Office in Sana’a to convict him on September 14 of kidnapping and sexual assault, according to the family’s lawyer, Nazim Al-Hariri.
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However, the court later dropped the kidnapping charge, convicting the man only of rape and sentencing him to 15 years in prison, along with a fine of 6 million Yemeni riyals (approximately $24,000). The family, alongside the girl’s lawyer, decided to appeal.
“Our evidence is based on a set of confessions and testimonies that leave no room for doubt about the defendant’s involvement. However, the court of first instance amended the charge and sentenced the defendant to a sentence that does not match the gravity of the crime,” Al-Hariri said.
“We demand that the defendant be retried before a higher court, and that the maximum penalties stipulated by law be applied, including the death penalty. We will not hesitate to use all available legal means to achieve justice for the child and her family,” he added.
This case is one of many that have gone undocumented, due in part to restrictions on journalists and humanitarian organizations working in Yemen since the war began in 2015.
In 2022, the UN Secretary-General’s report indicated that 1,596 children — both boys and girls — were subjected to serious violations in Yemen, including recruitment, killing, maiming, sexual violence and kidnapping, in addition to attacks on schools and hospitals, and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Lack of documentation, fear of shame
The lack of proper documentation and the absence of an international accountability mechanism have exacerbated sexual assault-related violations, often compounded by the stigma surrounding survivors.
Yet stories and incidents have found their way onto social media and stirred public opinion. Despite the violation of children’s privacy and the exploitation of their cases by social media users, these stories draw attention to the number of such crimes that have gone unreported and unpunished.
Between April 2022 and December 2023, a report by the Rasd Foundation for Human Rights documented seven cases of child rape involving children aged 8 to 15. The perpetrators included members of the Houthis, the internationally recognized government, and the separatist Southern Transitional Council.
War is the main cause of all violations against children.
Yet the violence and brutality of the violations that children are subjected to is not reported in a comprehensive manner, as it only includes cases that the monitoring team was able to document within a short period of time. According to the report, victims fear that their privacy will be violated, and that their families will be stigmatized. This state of fear and intimidation prevents them from responding to the investigation and documentation processes conducted by researchers.
“War is the main cause of all violations against children,” says human rights activist Kawkab Al-Dhaibani.
“All parties to the conflict in Yemen have made them tools and capital for war merchants. They have lost care from their families, the state, and all vital institutions and services, such as health and the justice system. Consequently, any child is exposed to sexual assault and even murder. The turbulent political situation in Yemen does not allow for justice mechanisms to work, especially with the systematic attack on human rights organizations that may monitor and document violations and crimes against children.”
“This issue is a ticking time bomb, and all these challenges should not make us stand idly by. We must demand an end to the war first and foremost, and establish a real state that imposes the law on everyone, and obliges them to respect international and customary human rights standards,” Al-Dhaibani said.
“But what we can do now is support international and local organizations to continue their work, establish community protection mechanisms by educating families, and at the very least we can protect children from clear dangers that everyone agrees on, such as harassment,” he said.
The perpetrators go unpunished
Two siblings, a boy and a girl, were repeatedly raped by a powerful man in Aden, the southern city that serves as an interim capital for the internationally recognized government. The suspect forced the girl to watch her brother being raped, and vice versa, and sometimes he did this in front of the parents under threat, according to lawyer Tahani al-Sarari, who has documented serious violations against children throughout the city of Aden, pleaded in 10 cases of child rape in Aden and Abyan.
The lawyer pursued the case for more than a year, collecting evidence for what she called one of her most psychologically exhausting cases. But she suddenly lost track of the family and was unable to reach them.
“The stigma, fear and anxiety, especially when the perpetrators have great influence that prevents families from reporting or prosecuting,” she said.
According to lawyer Khaled Al-Kamal, cases of child rape have increased significantly since the beginning of the war. He said he receives new cases in his law office almost daily, compared to before the war when he would come across one or two cases of this type per month.
Lack of psychological support and lifelong effects
A feminist activist in Yemen explained how her sister was raped and how she tried to find a psychiatrist to follow up with her — without their parents’ knowledge. They eventually went to Egypt to find a solution.
I don’t want my parents to know. I’m afraid they won’t be able to handle it.
“I don’t want my parents to know. I’m afraid they won’t be able to handle it, which might put my sister under even more psychological pressure. No one knows about it except my sisters, and we are trying to help her as much as we can,” the activist said.
She said she did not report the incident to the police because the investigation and interrogation that would lead her family to find out about it and she did not know how they would deal with the matter. She said her sister did not even see a doctor because the hospital would inform the security apparatus.
Child sexual abuse often leads to severe, long-term consequences, particularly in Yemen, where the fragile healthcare system has been further strained by years of conflict. With only 51% of health facilities fully operational, unpaid healthcare workers, and critical shortages of essential medicines, the country is ill-equipped to address the growing mental health crisis.
