Until 1990, present-day Yemen was actually two separate states — North Ye-men and South YeYe-men. A discussion of the “North” and the “South” is neces-sary to understand the political ideologies and tensions that shaped Yemen’s policy toward women’s rights. Key events include the establishment of the Ye-men Arab Republic in the north of YeYe-men in 1962 and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south of Yemen in 1967, the unification of these two governments in 1990, and the ensuing 1994 civil war that tore them apart.
These events shaped the Yemeni regime’s view of women’s rights.
* This work was submitted as a final thesis for a Master’s degree in International Affairs at Washington University in St. Louis.
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North Yemen prior to unification
North Yemen first gained sovereignty when the country won independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Between 1918 and 1962, North Yemen was ruled by the Hamidaddin imamate. During the imamate, the region was virtu-ally isolated from the rest of the world. Isolation was a deliberate strategy by the Imam, as he feared that outside interference would loosen his grip over the country.
The Imam was dethroned in 1962, and the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) was established. Subsequently, from 1962 to 1970, the Yemen Arab Republic en-dured civil war between Yemeni republicans (supported by Egypt and the So-viet Union) and Yemeni royalists (supported by Jordan and Saudi Arabia).
Nasser’s Egypt was weak and was no longer able to provide financial and military support to republicans in Yemen after it lost the 1967 Six-Day War.
This loss of foreign aid significantly weakened the Yemeni republicans, and the royalists eventually prevailed.
During the civil war, the royalists had recruited Yemeni tribesmen as merce-naries. Recruitment had been successful, and so the new government wanted to reward tribesmen for their service and secure an electoral base. In 1970 the royalist government created a Supreme Council for Defense, which was composed exclusively of tribal sheikhs. This council was charged with main-taining security in rural regions of the country. Additionally, the government founded a Consultative Council composed primarily of tribal leaders, which acted as an advisory body to the government.1
As a result, royalists and their Yemeni tribes shared political power. This ar-rangement was relatively smooth, since both royalists and the tribes had very conservative visions for Yemen. This was particularly evident with respect to the treatment of women and women’s rights and influenced Yemen’s poli-cies toward women even after unification.
South Yemen prior to unification
South Yemen initially had been a part of British India dating back to 1839.
In 1937, its main port city, Aden, became a British Crown Colony. The global wave of decolonization eventually reached South Yemen in 1963 when a na-tionalist movement in Aden started an armed struggle against the British.
As a result, in 1967, Britain withdrew and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) was established. In 1970, the People’s Democratic Repub-lic of Yemen embraced Marxism and established close ties with the Soviet Union. The leading party in South Yemen was later coined the Yemen Social-ist Party, and the party sought to live up to its name: “The new socialSocial-ist state embarked on the most progressive social program in the entire Arab world.”2 As Molyneux observed, the “legal and constitutional legitimacy of the state
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was not based on religion, but on ‘the people.’”3 Unlike its neighbors in the Yemen Arab Republic to the north, the People’s Democratic Republic of Ye-men’s definition of “people” even included women: “The PDRY Constitu-tion of 1978 made it a state responsibility to deliver rights to women within a framework of equality.”4
In 1986, a civil war erupted in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen be-cause of a power struggle within the Yemen Socialist Party. The clashes lasted for more than a month and resulted in severe human, political, and economic losses for the South. These losses set the grounds for unification talks between the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.
Unification of the North and the South
Negotiations for unification began in 1989. Both North Yemen and South Yemen had reasons to seek unification, although the South more urgently needed to merge with its neighbor to the north.
The South had emerged out of its civil war seriously weakened and fractured.
It viewed unification with the North as a remedy to its economic and politi-cal crises. Additionally, the Soviet Union had reduced economic support to the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and the South’s ruling party toward the end of the Cold War: financial aid to the South was reduced from
$400 million in 1988 to $50 million in 1989.5 The cutback had a devastating impact on the South’s economy. Moreover, the South had a much smaller population than the North. At the time of unification, South Yemen’s population was approximately two million people, while the North boasted about twelve million citizens.6
The South needed unification to survive, and the North in turn had negotiating leverage. As Elham Manea put it, “the southern leadership was the weaker partner in the new political setting for the simple reason that it needed the uni-fication more.”7
However, the North had interest in unification as well. Its main motivation was a discovery of oil reserves on the North’s and South’s shared border.8 The North anticipated that it could avoid hotly contested land ownership dis-putes via unification. The North also recognized that even when divided into North and South, there had always been a sense of a single Yemeni people and nationhood.9
Thus, after a series of talks, the unified Republic of Yemen (ROY) was cre-ated on May 20, 1990, by mutual consent of the North and South. Ali Abdul-lah Saleh, the former leader of the Yemen Arab Republic (North), became president, and Ali Salim al-Beidh, the former general secretary of the People’s
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Democratic Republic of Yemen (South), was appointed vice president. The in-stitutional amalgamation of the North and South occurred within a transitional period of 30 months. During this transitional period, the new government cre-ated a unified Parliament, agreed upon a Constitution, and held Parliamentary elections in 1993.10
The civil war of 1994
Despite all the incentives and efforts to build a unified state, tensions be-tween the North and South remained. The ruling elites of the unified state had two very different visions for Yemen’s future. Because of their very differ-ent pasts, the North was markedly conservative, while the South was more liberal.
These deep-rooted institutional and ideological differences tore the country apart. Following the pattern of a classic “security dilemma,” each side sought to build up its own military capabilities and solicit aid from foreign donors.11 Additionally, Northern elites sought to consolidate their power by maintain-ing and reinforcmaintain-ing the economic and demographic imbalances between the North and the South. The hostilities reached their peak when a large num-ber of political assassinations of socialist leaders from the South were perpe-trated by opponents in the North.12
The tensions created by this security dilemma made the war between the two parties inevitable.13 Fuelled by fear, distrust, and an internal power struggle, the North and the South entered into civil war in May of 1994. The Southern leaders declared secession from unified Yemen and established the Demo-cratic Republic of Yemen on May 21, 1994. However, the international com-munity did not recognize the break-off as a state. After a series of clashes, the North prevailed and President Saleh restored control over Yemen. The secession had failed.
Following the civil war, political leaders from the South lost a great deal of influence in the government. This left some political power up for grabs.
President Saleh decided to grant the tribal and Islamist leaders key political positions in the new government, since their support during the 1994 civil war had been crucial to his victory. This new influence allowed the tribes and Islamists to shape domestic politics and impose their conservative agenda on the political decision-making processes in Yemen for years to come. The conservative bent of the Yemeni government was especially evident regard-ing women’s rights.
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