2019 Aurora Humanitarian Huda Al-Sarari is a brave and inspiring Yemeni human rights activist, who singlehandedly investigates, exposes and challenges a clandestine network of secret prisons run by foreign governments in Yemen, where thousands of men and boys have faced arbitrary detention. She has helped hundreds of people by amassing incontrovertible evidence of the abuse that takes place within the prisons and succeeding in convincing Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to take up the cause. We asked Huda to tell us about her fight for human rights in Yemen. 

I am from Yemen, which is a country torn apart by war. I am a lawyer and I specialize in human rights monitoring. To be more specific, I monitor and document human rights violations, such as arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances in Aden and some other regions.

Even before graduating from the Islamic Law and Jurisprudence School of the Aden University I have been providing legal support to women who were victims of violence both in jails and in normal life. Besides this, we were educating and empowering these women. This is what got me interested in working in human rights and the field of law.

While providing legal support to women, we were also providing legal support to children in conflict with the law – this means minors who have committed a crime. They know nothing about human rights. I was doing all that before war came to Aden in 2015.

After the conflict in 2015, as the war was winding down, other violations came to light – not the ones that were directly life-threatening or affecting the civil population’s right to life and health. This is usually the first thing people hear about at the time of war. But this time people talked about other violations that were different from war crimes and violations. Now, on the agenda there were arbitrary arrests, murders, unlawful executions, an increase of nightly house raids, failure to act on behalf of the courts and the prosecution office, lack of state action and state institutions in Aden. These numerous violations spun completely out of control, and the crime rates grew in Aden and some other regions.

Obviously, these violations take place not only in my region or my area; similar despicable violations are also happening in other regions, controlled by one of the sides of the conflict – similar to the ones happening next to us. That us why we had to tell the world, the whole global community, the international organizations about the sheer amount of violations in Yemen perpetrated by all sides of the conflict, and about its victims. So, I was monitoring those violations and I put together a team of lawyers and journalists. We move around to monitor the cases of violations; we visit the families of the detainees. We get messages from them, complaints from them and their families about their houses being raided late at night, messages about enforced disappearances in Aden. There are also terrorist attacks in Aden. Normal people get arrested without a preliminary investigation or at least without being subpoenaed to the prosecutor’s office or to court that would initiate the investigation, without establishing the truth. Besides that, on the agenda there were murders of members of political parties and security officers. Nobody was investigating those crimes and the perpetrators just got away with it. This is what we do – we monitor all those violations.

When we monitor and document [these violations], we try to establish a dialogue with the authorities, with security forces, the prosecution, the courts, the governor. So far, we haven’t been able to reach any solution. There has even been established a National Committee, created at the behest of the people and supported by the Human Rights Council, but there haven’t been any proper results of the monitoring and documenting activity. Moreover, any accusations of violations were denied whenever they came up.

I’ve learnt so much working with women. At first, I was working at the Yemeni Women’s Union in Aden. I also was a state official and held a position of the General Director of the Department of Women and Children Issues at the Ministry of Justice. So, I was working with women and children there and I was working with women and children here. I really learnt a lot personally; it was a great experience. In Yemen, the law discriminates again women. Women have been fighting alongside men throughout different periods of our history. Women never called for war; women called for peace, but in times of peace women are ignored. In times of conflict, women take part in rescue and aid missions, take part in monitoring and documenting [the violations], help men and carry an additional burden. During forceful deportations from their homeland to locations unsuitable for life women are at risk of being killed or violated – but they persevere and help men, but as soon as there’s talk about a peaceful dialogue or a call for peace-building, women are again shoved aside and left in the background.

I have learnt a lot working on women issues. I’ve learnt strength, I’ve learnt patience, I’ve learnt perseverance, I’ve learnt to immerse myself in the issues that are impossible to deal with even for men, but women can do it thanks to their commitment and strength. I also saw with clarity that the laws discriminate against women, and we need to fight to change and correct them.

I’m proud to be the with human rights defenders. This gives me strength, gives me power to continue my work and to fight for the human rights. Besides, Aurora is a tremendous experience that will empower me to protect the victims, to continue fighting and to do even more.

Before coming to Armenia, I read about it, about its history, and I saw that the people there have also suffered from injustice and cruel persecution, from numerous cases of violations and exploitation. But they are a strong people who managed to get a second change, to build a new state. They are a very welcoming people: from the first minute at the airport I saw that people here were very nice. They deserve a dignified life and justice from other nations.