The titles we are today meeting to talk about and related to the leading role of women in making peace in the Middle East put us before a fact that our societies and peoples are facing great challenges at a time when wars and regimes hostile to democracy, peace and human rights keep widening.
Today, we are here to renew our commitment to keep working on enhancing the role of women in making democracy and peace in a world that is still in a state of horror and shock due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its dire consequences like war crimes, bombing of cities and displacement.
We meet today to re-foresee the future in light of the world’s regression from democracy and a setback in global trends that support the modern value system that prevailed in international trends since the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War at the end of 1990s.
We meet today to talk about peace and women’s participation in the leadership of their societies in the Middle East, while Europe is witnessing a war of conquest that has never crossed minds of all. It is an event that completes the circle of democratic regression that has started with Western governments' complicity and their support for tyrannical regimes in their wars on our Arab Spring, and with the reemergence of Taliban movement in Afghanistan and the Houthi militia in Yemen. These two movements have come back from the Middle Ages to take a place in the world of digital and the Internet, the world of the twenty-first century.
The return of fascism to threaten Europe is not unrelated to the events in the Middle East. When the international community remains silent about fascist wars and major powers act as being safe from their threats just because they are taking place in very far regions, one should then be sure that their consequences will hit everyone.
Once autocratic regimes, war criminals, and extremist groups found themselves recognized and immune from accountability for their crimes, they without hesitation declared their wars on peaceful popular revolutions and societies as punishment for their demands for change, freedom and democracy, and for daring to stand against them.
Unfortunately, today’s world, namely the international community and western governments, does not hesitate to recognize extremist militias that see in women a shame, seek to dominate others, criminalize art, antagonize freedoms and crack down on rights. On the other hand, this same world, along with its global order and major powers, has taken a hostile position to the Arab Spring and to the aspirations of peoples who have revolted for freedom, dignity, human rights and democracy.
Today’s world is ready to negotiate with the Taliban movement, with a theocratical and terrorist regime like in Iran, and to resume an agreement that could make Tehran have a nuclear bomb, and to close its eyes to the Iranian-backed sectarian militias responsible for destroying Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, while seeing in the peaceful Arab Spring a great threat to its international interests associated with tyrannical regimes.
The democratic West tolerated Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s coup and colluded with the wars against the Arab Spring and its societies by Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman, while our societies were left alone and defenseless, in the face of the wars of revenge of the ousted regimes and their regional and international sponsors. The issues of peace and democracy should be dealt with as one package, not on the basis of dividing the world into two parts: civilized and uncivilized.
In its support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mullahs' regime in Iran has taken a stance similar to the ones by the tyrants hostile to democracy, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed. They follow the same repressive methods and terrorist practices against their own people. Today, they have the same position in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a thing that make them feel safe.
In the face of the ugliness of wars and invasions and their threat to the whole world, which foreshadows large-scale armed conflicts, in the face of coups and counter-revolutions against the Arab Spring, and in the face of tyrants, sectarian and extremist groups, we should today renew our adherence to the values of freedom, democracy, peace and equality, emphasize the key role of women in our region and the world in promoting human rights and peace values. Let’s also re-express our aspirations to build a new world prevailed by civil values, human rights, equality, peace, security, responsibility and freedom, and to a world where life opportunities are available to everyone, all barriers are removed, and bridges of communication and dialogue between all are built.
Dear all friends,
Just as women and men are the origin of the human race, they serve as the wings of society. Thus, any exclusion of women or violations of their rights is a violation of society as a whole.
Hence, I would like to emphasize a basic idea I have always touched upon in many of my lectures and speeches, the idea that the struggle for women’s participation and the strengthening their leadership role in making peace and democratic change can be properly achieved only when it is part of the society's struggle to liberate from tyranny and injustice. Experiences of societies tell so
Many women have managed to be leaders only when they placed themselves at the center of their community issues. They have managed to have a leading role only when they became part of political, social and cultural movements that have a comprehensive vision of how to achieve change and freedom, and advance society as a whole, including the status and rights of women.
When tyranny, along with discriminatory laws and regulations and inequality, govern society, their effects on everyone, men and women, without exception. The members of society enjoy freedom only when society is liberated from tyranny and oppression.
When examining the history of societies, it finds out women who emerged as leaders in their societies were the product of political and social movements in which women actively participated. They dedicated themselves to general issues of concern to all, including women’s issue and role and gender equality.
Pro-women positive discrimination, globally encouraged as a way to empower women to participate in the public sphere, are important measures, but they remain limited without leading to a fundamental change neither in women’s status and their leadership role in peacemaking and democratic change, nor in their participation rate in the public sphere.
Real change takes place with the rise of political and social movements that establish a new system on the ruins of the old one. Real change takes place with a cohesive struggle for all segments of society to establish the rule of law and the state that represents all its citizens and works to achieve their aspirations and hopes.
When issues of equality and women's rights become among priorities of the political and societal movement, women have a greater opportunity to participate widely in peacemaking and democratic change.
The rise of women leaders as a result of positive discrimination policy in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes will only bring about superficial change, while discrimination against women remains untouched. Moreover, such policy has also contributed to producing examples of feminists working in the service of tyrants and their oppressive practices against opponents and society in general. This has provided tyrants with a way to maintain their policies of anti-women discrimination, and prevent all family laws and discriminatory social systems from being touched.
I come from Yemen, a home to a popular revolution that erupted in 2011 and led to overthrowing the tyrannical regime. Unfortunately, it has suffered from a bloody war for eight years. This war, as I see, is nothing but a result of the counter-revolution waged against the entire Arab Spring, not just the Yemen revolution.
Here, I cannot talk to you about the leadership role of women without touching on the role of Yemeni and Arab women in the struggle for change and rights during the popular uprisings, as Arab women were given a historic opportunity to play an active role in order to obtain their rights and to have a voice and presence to express their own aspirations, an experience that has pushed some of them to the fore and allowed them to play a global role in defending issues of peace and women's rights, and in combating violence and wars.
The February 11 revolution in Yemen in particular and the other Arab Spring revolution in general adopted peacefulness as an a approach to bring about change, a thing that opened the door wide for participation and attracted a large female population from all parts of Yemen to contribute to making change and to be part of the most important event in their society’s history.
Our experience inspires us to say that there could be no liberation for women without liberating society as a whole. The history, with all its events and transformations, shows this. Hence, the role of women in change is the vanguard of their efforts to free themselves from grievances, abolition, oppression and discrimination.
Having a loud voice at home is a gateway for women to the world and to join th the global feminist movement’s struggle for women’s rights and the promotion of peace around the world, and against violence, wars and injustice.
Hopes were high for a radical transformation in women’s issues, role, participation, and long struggle for a citizenship state where both men and women live on an equal footing, without discrimination on grounds of gender, color, belief, race, sect, religion, social level and influence. However, the war has prevented all these aspirations, cast a dark shadow over the entire society, and thus postponed these transformations indefinitely after we were so close to make a difference in the status of women, but hope is always there.
Our struggle against the war and its culprits is in essence for the sake of these values we strive to consolidate in our societies and countries. During the past ten years, a horrific form of war invented by dictatorships out of revenge against their revolting people.
In order to stay in power, these regimes did not hesitate to wage devastating wars, destroy our countries and turn them into rubble over women, men and children. They have tried to block our horizons with smoke of gunpowder and the dust of demolition, but our free will was, will remain, stronger than death and destruction, and the future belongs to us, and not to tyrants and murderers.
Our struggle for change will never stop. The war was, and still is, the project of tyrany and counter-revolutionary forces whose interest is to keep the status of women backward, even worse, and to prevent any transformations that will ensure women a greater presence in the struggle for the rights of full citizenship, freedom and dignity they deserve to have as human beings with full rights.
Our struggle to bring peace, advance the leadership role of women, expand their participation in the public sphere, and achieve gender equality will bear fruit only when it becomes part of the struggle of the whole society for liberation from injustice, tyranny and totalitarian regimes.
Therefore, encouraging the political and societal movement to attract more women to participate in changing the reality of injustice, domination and enslavement will place the role and status of women among top priorities of society the desired state, the state of law, equality and justice, which guarantees the respect for dignity of all society members.
If we are honest with ourselves and with our global partners, we will find that every title presented today globally regarding issues of women's leaders and their role, peace, democracy and civil society brings us back to the Arab Spring. Any attempt to leap over the Arab Spring is nothing but a form of normalization with those whose hands were stained with the blood of male and female young people who represented symbols of aspirations towards civil society, equality and human rights.
We will lose our self-confidence and faith in our cause if we proceed to empty the concepts on civil society and the participation of women from their contents, and accept their transfer into a festive ritual in hotel halls isolated from the revolutions, social movement, conflicts, wars and confrontations between the forces of change and the forces of tyranny and their allied extremist militias and regional axes hostile to freedom and democracy.
The work to enhance the leadership role of women and the participation of women in peace-making and change, and to contribute to pushing our societies to leave the circles of backwardness and tyranny can be accomplished at two levels:
1) at the level of countering the counter-revolutionary wars and coups targeting the wave of change over the past decade;
2) at the level of spreading civic values and supporting movements and organizations advocating for women's issues and rights and combating violations against women in war zones and within countries ruled by authoritarian regimes.
With the return of coups and the emergence of extremist militias in hotbeds of war, our countries have gone through a state of regression. The de facto putschist and militia authorities are hostile to democracy, rights, freedoms and the participation of women in the public sphere. Providing support for democratic transformations is the safe way to establish real stability reflecting the contents of social peace within countries.
In conclusion, I re-draw attention to the tragic war in my country, Yemen, and remind the international community of its responsibility for about thirty million people whose lives have been hostage to the hell of war, the unjust blockade, and the world’s worst human crisis.
Yemen is part of this world, but it is experiencing the tragedies of the fascist war and the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, alone and defenseless from any real support.
The United Nations and major powers have failed to help Yemen stop the war and restore its state. The world has done nothing to stop atrocities against Yemenis. The major powers have turned 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. Actually, the reluctance, rather than inability, by major powers, to use the effective mechanisms towards Yemen seem to account for why Yemen’s situation remains unchanged.
We all have realized how they have moved in Ukraine and implemented all its deadly punitive mechanisms within days in order to isolate a huge country the size of Russia, and this proves that they can do a lot to force Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to stop their wars against Yemen and put an end to the largest crime against a people and country in today’s world.
The world has abandoned the pro-freedom and -democracy revolutions in the Arab region, allowing the anti-democratic axes like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia declare their war of revenge on our societies for nothing but because we wanted to be human like others, and we revolted peacefully for the sake of dignity, the rule of law, civil society, equality and human rights. For eight 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.
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, on our people.
I call on the international community, especially the major powers, to take serious and tangible steps to help the Yemenis overcome the war and establish peace. Our demands are as follows:
- Any negotiations to end the war and establish peace must be under the supervision and sponsorship of the United Nations, the UN Security Council and the major countries, and not to leave the Yemen file in the hands of the regional parties to the war parties, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran. Calls from Saudi Arabia have begun to appear, and find an echo in Iran. Outwardly, they seem to be mercy and peace, but, inwardly, the opposite. In clear words, we warn that any deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran to divide Yemen into the spheres of influence through their affiliated militias, under the auspices of Russia, will not lead to peace our people aspire to, and will upgrade the war against our people and our country to a more brutal and criminal level.
- The importance to assure the territorial unity and integrity of the Republic of Yemen and its security, stability and sovereignty in any dialogue or negotiations to bring peace to Yemen. The coalition states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, on the one hand, and Iran and its affiliated Houthi militia, on the other, have worked to prepare the reasons for dividing Yemen among the aforementioned external parties. Efforts to stop the war requires first tampering with the destiny of Yemen to be stopped. Any division of Yemen would mean the perpetuation of the war, a thing our people will never accept, and will be the beginning of a long war rather than an end to the ongoing tragic one.
- Emphasis on the three references represented by “resolutions of UNSC and international legitimacy, the GCC Initiative, and NDC outcomes, as determinants of any peace talks on Yemen.
- Exerting efforts to lift the blockade imposed on our people by the Houthi militias from inside and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates from outside.
- The need for urgent international action to redouble humanitarian relief efforts for the Yemeni people who are under the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
In the end, let me extend my sincere greetings to all of you, and through you, to all those struggling for peace, democracy and the values of justice, equality, freedom and human rights!