The contact to Sanaa came about through the initiative of Noha al Eryani, a committed humanitarian aid worker, who was in Germany for three months last year as part of a scholarship and found contact with arche noVa at that time. With great strength, she personally tried to find support for the people in her country, because she knows the starving children not only from the photos in the social media.
"I wanted the aid to be not only short-term, e.g. in the form of food packages, but also to succeed in providing longer-term support. One of the most important target groups here are women and girls, who often suffer particularly badly in war and on whom the cohesion or survival of families also depends at the same time."
Therefore, she suggested arche noVa to support the work of the Yemeni Women's Union, which has been implementing empowerment and education programmes for decades.
At the beginning of December, the first of four bazaars took place in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Besides silver necklaces, embroidered waistcoats and ornaments for the household, there was also a handicraft table for children and a play. The aim of the market was indeed to bring handmade, beautiful things to the guests. However, the occasion of the event was a much more serious one.
The Yemen Women Union (YWU) launched a series of events over several weeks to mark the UN campaign against gender-based violence. The kick-off in Sanaa fell in the middle of the 16-Days-of-Activism, which the United Nations organises worldwide every year between the end of November and the beginning of December. Further bazaars are planned in Aden, Ibb and Damar.
arche noVa as well as the fundraising alliance Aktion Deutschland Hilft support the Yemeni Women's Union in this project to draw attention to the issue of gender-based violence in the context of war and crisis.
The crisis in Yemen is considered the biggest humanitarian disaster in the world. Every day in the media we see children's faces marked by hunger, sad eyes from which fear and need speak. What we do not see is violence in families, violence against women, which virtually "exploded" with the outbreak of the war in 2015, as the YWU puts it. Offences such as physical and psychological violence, rape and forced marriage have increased by more than 70 percent in the past five years. And this in a country like Yemen, which even before the outbreak of the war had one of the worst protection systems for women and girls worldwide.
Of the three million people currently displaced in their own country, about two-thirds are women and children, who often lack the basic necessities of life. According to a study cited by YWU, more than five million people are traumatised by war, more than 82 per cent of them women.
To help here, to alleviate the greatest need and to show perspectives for life, this is the goal that the Yemeni Women's Union has been pursuing for almost 30 years. The local NGO fights for women's rights, advises on legal matters and campaigns for freedom from violence. It also runs 14 shelters in ten regions of the country as well as six women's shelters in larger cities. Here, apart from therapies, life and career counselling, there is also health care, handicraft courses, literacy and English lessons. The aim is to give the women - who have often been rejected by their families or have fled out of fear of revenge or violence - the chance of a self-determined life. This also includes economic independence or at least the chance to earn some extra money.
That is also the idea of the bazaar project. In times of war, destruction and hardship, the women want to show, on the one hand, the beautiful things they produce, which create a friendly atmosphere simply because of their aesthetics. On the other hand, the project is also meant to break down barriers that separate the women from the rest of the population. Everyone should see that not only traumatised people in need of protection live in the women's shelters, but that these often stigmatised women and mothers are very capable of achieving something. At the bazaars they are artists, craftswomen, saleswomen, bakers, entrepreneurs. In any case, not victims.
In addition, the shelters also open their counselling and training services to women from the respective cities. There is psychological counselling, information on women's rights, vocational training and development.
In a play or with a special song, others also take sides with traumatised women and girls - namely boys and men. Because the issue of gender-based violence is one that affects the whole of society and can only be solved as a whole. The bazaars are an atmospheric occasion to raise awareness for this critical issue and to create awareness that one can help.
