Dear brothers and sisters, "Change" is the secret word as for the Arab region and the Middle East. To the extent that it summarizes the course of the Arab Spring revolutions

, it reflects urgent and necessary needs of our societies after decades of tyranny, failure, accumulated disappointments and setbacks in development, economy, politics, education and all walks of life in our countries.

We were highly motivated and all set to get rid of a chronic tyranny hindering the rule of law, development, education and life as a whole. Without breaking the cycle of tyrannical and sectarian elites’ monopoly on politics and power, the issue of change will remain stalled. Nothing has been achieved after forty years of tyranny; they have failed developmentally and economically, and the current situation of women and human rights is worse than at any time since our countries’ independence from colonialism.

Many have long had extensive discussions and debates on the gradual change as the best choice. Nevertheless, our fact-based experiences refute such allegation. Indeed, the monopoly on power and the state being subordinated to the will of dictatorship, be it an individual, a family, a political elite or a sect, turn any talk of the gradual change into an illusion and a means to embellish tyranny at the expense of rights, freedoms and the society’s will. 

Today we remember how economic reform agendas in the early 1990s were employed to open the door to wide-spread corruption and prevented the state from its duties. Moreover, the then so-called emerging democracies were actually mere tyrannical regimes under the cloak of democracy, while in fact they continued to monopolize the state, power and wealth and empower corrupt elites and sectarian groups here and there. 

Various consequences of tyranny have accumulated and erupted into terrorist groups, economic and development failure, widespread poverty and unemployment, and poor conditions in various spheres of life across Arab countries. There will be no way for social change as long as political tyranny sees in backwardness a guarantee of its survival. We add nothing new when we point out to the support of the Arab region’s tyrannical regimes for the spread of religious extremism and its groups, in cooperation with major powers that used this deadly tactic in their abroad geopolitical conflict as a means of advancing their interests.

Since the mid-19th century, religious fatwas disrespecting women and their rights have been issued by tyrannical monarchies backed, protected and safeguarded by the West. Over the four decades leading up to 2011, there was a build-up of tyranny, its deep structures, its hostility to change and its restriction on rights and freedoms. 

The regimes exploited resources and wealth of society to build repressive apparatuses, empower corrupt elites and crushed every attempt towards societal mobility and change. Some quick calculations reinforce this fact. Our countries have become poorer despite their considerable wealth. The failure has expanded to already poor education and collapsed economy, and the situation of women has worsened under all forms of oppression against different groups of society.

The approach to women’s issues from the end of the Cold War to 2010, under the titles of affirmative action and women’s empowerment, did not improved the status of women in our societies. The majority of women continued to suffer from tyranny, poverty, social oppression and discrimination. I have always believed that a better situation for women needs to integrate their liberation and rights into issues of society as a whole.

Only when the change process is achieved and a state is established for all its citizens, women will have their proper place. At that moment, women as part of a society liberated from tyranny will have better chances of realizing their rights. When political forces in power are driven by the faith that women are equal to men in rights and duties and no one has the right to disrespect them nor their rights, then the issue of women will has been put all at once on the path of salvation from the injustice and discrimination. All this requires women's equity and equality to be part of the culture and visions of change forces.

Otherwise, "empowerment" will be only exceptional measures that promote the discrimination as an approach. If the state and the forces in power in any country believe in equality and reject anti-women discrimination, women will not need “positive discrimination” that grants them some rights. If the culture of the ruling forces is based on discrimination against women and on inequality between men and women, which is further fostered in educational curricula, schools and mosques, then there will be no way to change the public attitude towards women except with a political change against the ruling forces and their backward discriminatory culture.

Empowerment was often superficial and exploited by the regimes hostile to women and their rights. Empowerment can only be an effective tool of change for the benefit of women if a solution to power and tyranny is developed. I am talking here about societies and countries where this problem has not yet been addressed, and their dictatorships, either flagrantly or under the guise of democracy, adopt policies hostile to women and society as a whole, and do not recognize the people’s right to rule itself through a free and fair democracy.

This is how the status of women in our societies looks like. The human rights situation in general is still at its worst, and has grown even worse due to the retaliatory wars against our peaceful revolutions and societies. Wars came to take revenge on peoples who raised their voices in order to decide their fate and choose who would rule them.

 

Dear brothers and sisters, 

Every time I try to reflect on our experience during the past decade, I find myself returning to the essence of the change process represented by the Arab Spring, and how it served as a test to international positions on all issues of freedoms, human rights, democracy and the desired transformation towards civil society and the modern state.

All the slogans chanted by the world regarding support for democracy and the right of peoples to self-determination and choosing their rulers evaporated due to its position on the Arab Spring revolutions. We faced a look-like world war that continues to this day. Have we broken the laws of the universe when we raised our voices for change?!! Autocratic regimes had failed and rotted.

Unemployment, poverty, oppression, crackdowns, corruption, and the bequest of republics to sons, all of this was the reality of the Arab regimes before popular uprisings in 2011. Terrorism was a product of tyranny, whether through the recruitment of extremist groups by the regimes, or due to the latter's economic and political failure and bringing societies to a dead end.

Millions of Arab youth found themselves stripped of their ambitions and life chances. We did not make revolutions out of nowhere. In fact, the Arab revolutions should have broken out earlier, and their outbreak was our historical opportunity to catch up with the times. But the global order stood in the side of the counter-revolutions led regionally by Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE. They pumped money and weapons and recruited and supported the militias to confront our aspirations for democratic countries where citizenship and law prevail.

We neither attacked them nor declared war on them. Yet, they saw in our freedom a threat to them and in change an attack on them. Saudi Arabia and Iran compete with each other about whom of them will reap the benefit of counter-revolutionary wars against our people. Both, however, have the same goals hostile to our aspirations for change, democracy, human rights and public freedoms.

 

Dear all friends, 

My country, Yemen, though part of this world, is facing terrible tragedies due to a fascist war. After six years of war, Yemen remains the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, standing alone and without any real support. The United Nations and major powers have failed to help Yemen stop the war and restore its State, and the world has done nothing to stop genocides against Yemenis. 

The major powers turn a blind eye to Iran and its support for the Houthi militias, while at the same time siding with their interests with Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the expense of Yemen. Turning a blind eye to the crimes and violations of the regional parties in Yemen is nothing but betrayal and tacit support for warlords at home and for Iran, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi responsible for bloodshed in Yemen.

The failure and inability of the international community to activate its collective mechanisms to stop war and economic collapse and help Yemenis restore their national state have contributed to the continuation of war and chaos and the growing humanitarian crisis.

For seventh years, our people has been facing an all-out war of revenge, a fierce war that represents a new pattern of undermining the life foundations of the entire population. The state collapsed and sectarian Houthi militias overran the capital and cities. In light of the non-payment of salaries and the collapse of the health and service system, the Houthi militias have taken control of international aid.

These militias have tampered with the content of curricula in areas under their control by imposing a extremist sectarian content, prohibited singing, took arbitrary measures against women, and imposed a puritanical vision that abuses women, not unlike what the Taliban has done in Afghanistan.

For their part, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have bombed our cities and infrastructure, established militias loyal to them in the city of Aden, prevented the legitimate government from operating from within the country and taken control of key ports, oil-gas facilities and strategic islands like Socotra and Perim. Millions of Yemenis are at risk of starvation, suffering from poor living conditions, war, chaos, non-payment of salaries and wages, total absence of basic public services and rapidly deteriorating local currency.

We call on the world to stop this brutal war against our Yemeni people. We call on the world to support our people to restore their state and complete the transitional period in accordance with the three references represented by UNSC resolutions on Yemen, the agreement on transfer of power and the outcomes of the national dialogue. 

We call on the world to impose restrictions on warlords and militia leaders and not to deal with them as political parties. We call upon the world to respect the right of our people to life and put an end to a fascist war whose main parties are Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their affiliated militias. 

In closing, let me tell that our belief in our right to a life in which human rights, freedom and dignity are preserved, will not fade away, and its flame will never dim as long as we have a breath of life.

May you all be free and strong fighters for the sake of humanity! Glory be to the continuous human struggle for dignity, citizenship, justice, freedom and a decent life for all human beings.