Yemeni Women Take a Stand against Tribal Violence
Wardah Mujawwar applied skills gained in Partners' Y-CCM training to prevent a tribal conflict in her local community.
Wardah Mujawwar is a 26 year-old woman from Al-Khalaq district in Yemen’s Al-Jawf governorate. Wardah, whose name means “rose” in Arabic, was trained as a community facilitator under Partners’ Yemen Community-based Conflict Mitigation program (Y-CCM). She comes from a rural area of Yemen where most women are illiterate and largely excluded from the public domain. Sheikh ‘Ali Alajji, who recommended Wardah to Partners Yemen (PY) as a potential female community leader, describes her as “young but educated and very bright” and “well-respected among men and women in her community.”
Wardah says that she learned a lot through the Training of Trainers (ToT) in conflict resolution and conflict-sensitive development which PY offered through the Y-CCM program.
Her favorite topic was mediation, and less than a year after joining the program, she was able to use the skills she gained from the training to prevent a series of revenge killings in her local community between her own brother, Ahmed, and a man from another tribe. During the initial fight, Ahmed was stabbed by the other tribesman. A young, proud man, he intended to seek revenge on the man who had harmed him. “I feared for my brother’s life and also for the life of that other man who stabbed him. I feared most that this would spark a cycle of revenge killings between the two tribes,” said Wardah. “My brother was stubborn; he wouldn’t listen to my uncles or the men from the village, and he even accused them of not being interested in helping him, saying that they had let him down. He was determined to take matters into his own hands,” she added. To make matters worse, Wardah’s mother also wanted revenge. She was upset about what happened to her son and wanted the man who stabbed him to be punished. So she encouraged Ahmed to seek revenge.
Wardah and her sister, both of whom had been trained in conflict resolution techniques through the Y-CCM program, sat together and brainstormed ways to stop their brother from sparking an inter-tribal conflict. Since these two women have no formal authority over Ahmed, they decided their best strategy to convince him not to take revenge would be to target others who had more influence over him. Together, they listed a number of people they could approach who might be able to pressure their brother to call off his revenge plan. The list included their mother and some influential leaders from both tribes.
They tried to convince him that it would be honorable to forgive the perpetrator and to seek compensation for his wound without resorting to more violence. Finally, Wardah and her sister talked to influential members in their community and asked them to intervene.
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“Eventually we solved the problem ourselves. We did a better job than the men in the family” - Wardah Mujawwar |
Because of the determined actions taken by Wardah and her sister, 
representatives from her tribe eventually met with the perpetrator and a representative from his tribe. The conflict between the two tribes was resolved without violence; an agreement was signed in which the brother forgave the perpetrator and his tribe, and received monetary compensation. “The process took about two months, but eventually we solved the problem ourselves. We did a better job than the men in the family,” says Wardah. This story demonstrates that even in a culture where women’s activities in the public sphere are severely limited, women can play an important role in managing, preventing, and resolving violent conflicts.
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