Mayar[1] shuddered as she started down the dark path from the bathroom back toward the shelter where her husband and two daughters lay sleeping. Although it was only about 100 meters, it felt like a mile every time she walked that path as a woman, alone at night. Asking her husband to accompany her would have meant waking the girls, too. She couldn’t imagine leaving them sleeping alone in the darkness while both parents made the trek to the bathroom. The silhouette of their makeshift tent suddenly melted into the shadows as a cloud passed over the moon that had been Mayar’s only light along the path, sending another tremor through her slight frame. That October night, it was just fear that made her tremble, but with winter approaching she knew that soon she would be shivering from the cold, too.
As a member of the lowest caste in the Arab world’s poorest country and a nation that is regularly named as one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, Mayar has spent most of her life feeling vulnerable. Her ethnic group, an Afro-Arab people that self-identifies as the Muhamasheen (marginalized), has been pejoratively labeled “Al-Akhdam” (servants) by many in Yemeni society and has been subjected to descent-based discrimination for centuries. In 2013, the Yemeni government told the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that, “The vast majority of them are dark-skinned and live in social, economic, cultural, and political isolation.” Relegated to the bottom of Yemen’s social structure, the Muhamasheen are only offered low-paid, low-skilled forms of work, such as street cleaning. Meanwhile, without rights to land ownership or tenure, the majority of the Muhamasheen are forced to live on the edges of urban areas in makeshift accommodations constructed of materials such as cardboard, cloth, wood, and sheet metal. These dwellings are clustered into shanty towns, which often lack sewage systems and, even before Yemen’s current conflict, had only sporadic electricity.
For decades, the largest concentrations of Muhamasheen slums have been found around Yemen’s main cities of Sana’a, Aden, Taiz, Ibb, Dhamar, Mukalla, and Hodeidah, as well as in the provinces of Abyan and Lahj. Thus, it was in one such shanty town outside the Red Sea coastal city of Hodeidah that Mayar entered the world and had the weight of centuries of discrimination conferred on her at birth—a birth that was not even officially registered. Like over 90 percent of all Muhamasheen, Mayar would go through life without the personal documentation needed to validate her very existence and allow her to go to school or vote.[2] By the time she was a young woman, however, no paperwork was required for a man from her community named Ayman to notice her. They got married and had two daughters of their own, and for the first time, Mayar had a sense that her life actually mattered. When everyone else looked at her like she was nothing, her girls looked at her like she was everything. Even when they were hungry and she had no way to feed them, the girls’ cries reminded her that she was significant to someone.
Born just before and after Yemen’s war broke out in 2015, Mayar’s daughters have known hunger their entire lives while surviving in a humanitarian crisis that remains among the world’s worst. Muhamasheen families living outside the most conflict-affected cities—such as Aden, Taiz, and Hodeidah—were among the first Yemenis to be internally displaced when the fighting initially erupted. Many have been displaced over and over again in the years since then, as the discrimination they were already accustomed to in everyday life was compounded by the new dangers and threats they faced as Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Whereas many IDPs took refuge in schools and hospitals or were supported by host communities and local authorities, the Muhamasheen were largely unable to find such accommodation due to social stigma. Local sheikhs forced many Muhamasheen families to leave their temporary settlements, and without any tribal affiliation, they had no ancestral village to return to as other Yemenis did. In their search for a safe place to settle, Muhamasheen IDPs were often harassed by host communities who brandished and even fired weapons to intimidate them into leaving.
Mayar, Ayman, and their daughters were among the IDPs who moved from place to place around Hodeidah throughout the war until an escalation of armed clashes in August 2023 finally drove them to flee the province altogether, along with four other Muhamasheen families. They arrived in a rural part of Taiz province, where a humanitarian organization told them they could make a camp on a certain piece of land and promised to provide them with tents designated for displaced families. However, the owner of the land protested—saying that he had planned to plant crops on the land—and insisted that the Muhamasheen families pay rent to camp there. Unable to pay, the five Muhamasheen families were evicted and moved on until they found a place to camp rent-free. There, Ayman constructed a shelter for Mayar and the girls from materials that he could scavenge since the promised tents were never delivered. After that, another organization came and said they would construct basic bathrooms—simple, enclosed pit latrines—by the shelters the displaced families had set up. However, the property owner who was allowing the families to camp on his land refused to allow any such structures to be built. Thus, they had no alternative other than to continue using the facilities 100 meters away.
From Night to Darker Night, an extensive report on discrimination and inequality in Yemen produced by the Equal Rights Trust in 2018, explained how prejudice often prevents the Muhamasheen from accessing humanitarian aid available to other Yemenis. One Muhamasheen man quoted in the report said, “I was discriminated against by relief distributors who did not give me a share of the food aid… [They said] I would sell the food and that I am used to begging… However, they distributed the food baskets among those who belonged to tribes or those they had personal connections with. They gave the assistance to undeserving families whereas I could not cover my daily needs or the needs of my kids, who usually go to bed with empty stomachs. I call upon all relief NGOs to stand by and save us from the scorn of society and treat us as humans.”[3]
Qualifying for aid distributions can be especially challenging for the Muhamsheen since few have birth certificates or any other sort of government-issued identification to validate their personhood. This lack of documentation has also made it notoriously difficult to estimate just how many Muhamsheen there are. According to the Equal Rights Trust report, some say there are as many as 3.5 million Muhamasheen in Yemen—a figure that represents more than 12 percent of the population—while others say there are only around 500,000—less than two percent of the population. Meanwhile, the reportadditionally asserts that Muhamasheen women like Mayar are “particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and harassment by armed groups.” In 2010, five years prior to the current conflict, the Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF) and WITNESS released a short film[4] documenting stories of violence and injustice experienced by Muhamasheen women in Yemen. Now nearly nine years of war has only heightened the gender-based violence they are subjected to, which includes solicitation, sexual assaults, and “hate-based attacks”—all risks that contribute to the terror of long walks to the bathroom.
Tonight, Mayar and her daughters will still shudder if they need to make that 200-meter round-trip trek to relieve themselves. However, they did finally get a bit of relief that is shielding them from the winter cold. Mercifully, a local non-profit distributed brand-new blankets to them and the other four families in their makeshift camp before October ended. Of course, they needed much more than blankets, but they still felt fortunate as many other displaced families in Yemen have received nothing at all to help them endure the winter elements. Last year, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation produced a short clip on the hardships Yemen’s IDP families face every winter and how the aid available to assist them has decreased year after year.[5] Being included in a distribution of such scarce resources for once certainly brings a little warmth to families like these. Still, the Muhamasheen also understand that even a comprehensive peace agreement that brings Yemen’s war to a close is unlikely to end the bitter winter of social exclusion the group has so long endured. In fact, some Yemenis argue that the Muhamasheen have been less affected by the economic hardships of Yemen’s protracted conflict than higher-caste Yemenis since they are used to living on society’s scraps. These Yemenis also point out that Muhamasheen staff working sewage and sanitation jobs in the cities have continued to receive their salaries, unlike many other public servants around the country.
“If they didn’t pay them the country would turn into a real disaster—their salary is a minimal amount, but the work of sanitation is very important,” says Salim, a retired teacher who lives in Sana’a. “The Muhamasheen have gained immunity from diseases through their work, and they can live in boxes or anywhere. They’re also famous for the saying, ‘Today is your holiday,’ by which they mean, whatever you earn today—spend today. They’ve never been in a position to think about the future anyway.”
Salim says Muhamasheen he has spoken with in Sana’a say they feel they have more dignity these days than they did before the war and that they are only required to work six days a week now, down from seven days a week in the years prior to the conflict. Similarly, in Aden, a supervisor of Muhamasheen street cleaners and sanitation workers says his staff is currently receiving close to $60 a month—the same amount paid to teachers and low-level administrators in government offices. However, other Yemenis who have spoken to Muhamasheen in the streets of Aden report that these workers say they aren’t being paid their due. Yet regardless of whether or not these urban Muhamsheen are continuing to receive some minimal pay for services that are considered beneath the dignity of those they clean up after—they still lack any pathways for social or professional advancement. Like all Muhamasheen, they remain largely unable to integrate into a society that has left them out in the cold for centuries.
Today, the exact origins of the Muhamasheen are debated. Some believe they are descended from African slaves or Ethiopian soldiers who came to Yemen as far back as the sixth century. Others stress that the Muhamasheen have Yemeni roots.[6] Due to this uncertain lineage, social custom has prevented the Muhamasheen from marrying outside their caste—freezing them out of Yemeni economic, tribal, and political structures for so long that they have had little to offer ruling elites in terms of money or influence. This has all left them facing unique difficulties in escaping poverty and illiteracy in a society organized around the belief that a person’s ancestry dictates the totality of their social and biological essence.[7] Nonetheless, prior to Yemen’s current war, some small steps were being taken to improve life within Muhamasheen communities. These included the establishment of social services centers in Sana’a and Aden to provide education, training, and healthcare; the allocation of 150 free places in Taiz University and 30 places in Sana’a University to the Muhamasheen; the allocation of 1,500 posts in the armed forces to the Muhamasheen; and the transfer of home ownership in residential compounds in Sana’a, Taiz, Aden, and Hodeidah to Muhamasheen households. Furthermore, during a panel discussion featuring three Yemeni women hosted by Al Jazeera in 2012,[8] education was repeatedly cited as a key to the Muhamasheen’s continued advancement. Unfortunately, more than a decade later, not only the Muhamasheen, but all of Yemen’s 10.67 million school-age girls and boys have had their education regularly interrupted due to war. Likewise, other small but hard-won gains on the long road toward equal rights for the Muhamasheen in Yemeni society have also been largely wiped out.
According to the Declaration of Principles on Equality, the right to equality is understood as “the right of all human beings to be equal in dignity, to be treated with respect and consideration and to participate on an equal basis with others in any area of economic, social, political, cultural, or civil life.” For now, the idea of enjoying such rights is beyond the scope of dreams for Muhamasheen women like Mayar and her daughters. However, sometimes while they walk to the bathroom on dark nights, they still dare to hope for a private pit latrine adjacent to the makeshift home where they now sleep warmly under their brand-new blankets.
[1] Names changed to protect vulnerable Yemenis living without protections of their basic human rights.
[2] Only nine percent of Muhamasheen register their children at birth according to a 2016 report from Minority Rights Group International.
[3] https://www.equalrightstrust.org/ertdocumentbank/Yemen_EN_online%20version.pdf
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3MqjbkwVEI&t=1s
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SSPjzwTC_g
[6] https://minorityrights.org/minorities/muhamasheen/
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