Yemen women suffer under tightening Houthi restrictions

A tightening of restrictions on women in Yemen by the Houthi rebels – echoing religious regimes in Iran and Afghanistan – is dashing the hopes of those who dream to continue their lives elsewhere.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who have controlled swathes of the Arab world’s poorest country since seizing the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014, have increasingly enforced travel restrictions on women over the past eight months, according to residents and activists. Restrictions on female freedoms, which parallel decrees issued by the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan, are not part of Yemeni law and are enforced arbitrarily through rebel directives.

"This is the first time that a decision limiting the freedom of movement of women has come from an official authority,” said Radhya al-Mutawakel, co-founder of the Yemeni rights group Mwatana. The travel restrictions set a "very dangerous" precedent and disproportionately affect women who have jobs, she added.

Yemeni society, although deeply conservative, has traditionally allowed space for individual freedoms. But that is changing under the Houthi movement, which was founded with the aim of pushing for a theocracy.

Houthi forces recently clamped down on women traveling without a “mahram” – or male relative – even within the country. Women in the Houthi stronghold of Saada are also denied contraception if they don’t have a prescription and their husband isn’t present, and can’t travel alone after dark as an all-female police force enforces discipline.

However, women in big cities are pushing back. Yemeni student Abir al-Maqtari, from the southwest city of Taez, dreamt of studying abroad in Egypt, but she was blocked from leaving the Sanaa airport without a male guardian.

“I got a scholarship in Cairo, but the Houthis didn’t let me travel,” she said. “I thought I could try to travel via the airport in (government-held) Aden, but the Houthis also stopped me from reaching it.”

"As a Yemeni woman, I feel that all my rights and my freedoms are being stolen from me.”

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