Arab Gulf and YemenThe current general status of women’s human
rights conditions in Yemen and the Arab Gulf states
is broadly characterized by international and local
human rights non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) as being abysmal. Progressive changes to-
ward achieving equality for women, particularly in
states that maintain religiously based personal sta-
tus laws that discriminate against women, have
been slow. Despite the existence of regional com-
monalities, reasons for this gloomy status are
numerous and vary from country to country. One
principal reason, however, relates to the weak sta-
tus of civil movement for women’s human rights.
Civil activism pertaining to women’s human
rights is widely conditioned by the political frame-
work within which civil society operates in the
region. Historically undemocratic state regimes
and ostensibly self-declared Islamic ruling elites
have consistently inhibited the emergence of effec-
tive civil activism for promoting gender equality.
Using a plethora of techniques that range from offi-
cial refusal, to registering local human rights
NGOs, to openly imposing life-threatening experi-
ences, harassment, and imprisonment on activists,
autocratic regimes in the region have continuously
repressed the maturity of not just women’s civil
activism but credible human rights movements in
general (An-Na±im 2001). Existing NGOs repre-
senting women’s issues are either influenced or con-
trolled by the ruling regimes, a factor that renders
them suspect of being government showcases to
foreign human rights monitors. Consequently basic
human rights enjoyed by women in the region, such
as the right to work and to education, are attained
not through a history of civil activism but by gov-
ernment sanctions. This reality of inhibited civil
activism subjects gender related human rights to
the ideological dispositions as well as the political
positions of the ruling regimes vis-à-vis internal
conservative and religious pressure elements the
state may face. Historically, and in the face of thriv-
ing political Islamist groups, the autocratic states of
the region often appear, paradoxically, as the pro-
tectors of women’ rights, albeit in limited ways,
against the excessive demands of internal politico-
religious movements in connection with women’s
rights.
Commonly in the societies of the region, gender
related human rights are intrinsically conditioned
by larger normative legal rights granted or sus-
pended by the Sharì≠a, a divinely ordained system
of law that covers the totality of the Muslim way
of living, including gender relations and rights.
arab gulf and yemen 269Consequently, actual rights and triumphant dia-
logues on women’s status within society tend to be
those rights and dialogues consistent with interpre-
tations of the Sharì≠a. External systems of women’s
human rights norms, such as the universal rights
proposed by the United Nations and international
conventions, are incorporated when and if they can
be rationalized within the internal Sharì≠a norms.
In the moderate countries of the region, such as
Yemen and Bahrain, international human rights
standards pertaining to gender equality are incor-
porated as constitutional rights of all female citi-
zens. Such incorporation, however, cannot override
the power of the Sharì≠a law, which the constitution
assigns as the supreme basis of all civil rights,
including those regulating marriage contracts and
inheritance. Consequently the rights stipulated
under the Sharì≠a override the constitutionally pro-
claimed rights. Those universal human rights pro-
posed by international organizations are generally
faced with difficulties when they contradict or
undermine the gender related rights prescribed by
the Sharì≠a.
Despite the Sharì≠a’s evident supremacy, there
are other sources that prescribe gender relations,
status, and rights. Centuries-old patriarchal cus-
tomary laws and contemporary socioeconomic fac-
tors often coalesce and provide the rationale under
which gender inequalities and the violations of
women’s human rights are perpetuated in this
region. In Yemen, for example, legalized insurance
policies provide only half the financial indemnities
and compensations due to female victims in cases
of automobile accidents. The genesis of these poli-
cies is a tribal customary law that assigns women
half the blood retribution in cases pertaining to
homicide or accidental death. Another case is a
state decree in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that
denies Saudi women as well as foreign women liv-
ing in the kingdom the right to drive vehicles. It
would be inconceivable to rationalize this law
under the Sharì≠a since women in the early Islamic
period had the right to ride camels and horses, the
era’s means of transportation. Reasons cited for
officially suspending such rights relate to social
insecurities allegedly associated with the presence
of a high percentage of single foreign male migrant
workers in the kingdom. Following the Iran-Iraq
War (1980–8), a group of 20 Saudi women activists
challenged this law by taking to the streets of
Riyadh driving cars. Their actions were seen as ille-
gally mutinous and prompted brutal governmental
responses. Severe humiliation accompanied by
imprisonment and loss of employment opportuni-
ties befell those involved.