Progress Amid Resistance

572 WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAF The government should take concrete steps to protect female journalistsand rights activists from smear campaigns and government-sanctionedharassment. It should amend its laws and procedures to penalizesuch practices.AUTHORElham Manea holds dual nationalities, Yemeni and Swiss. She is a writer,human rights activist, and political scientist focused on the Middle East.She is a Fulbright scholar and holds a doctorate in political science fromthe University of Zurich, a master’s degree in comparative politics from theAmerican University in Washington, D.C., and a bachelor’s degree in po -litical science from Kuwait University. She has published academic andnonfiction books in English, German, and Arabic, in addition to two novelsin Arabic. She works as a lecturer at the University of Zurich’s Poli ti calScience Institute and a consultant for Swiss government agencies.NOTES1Shadow Report prepared by Yemeni NGOs on the CEDAW implementation, initiatedand coordinated by the Sisters’ Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF) in 2007, 9, availableat http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/SAFHRYemen41.pdf.2SAF, Shadow Report.3See Yemen’s sixth periodic report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discriminationagainst Women (CEDAW), March 13, 2007, 7–8, available at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/reports.htm; see also SAF, Shadow Report.4See Women’s Forum for Research and Training, “Series of Questions and Answers 7: TheConvention on the Elimination of All Discrimination against Women, Civil Rights,” inArabic, http://www.wfrt.org/dtls.php?ContentID=191; Rasha Jarhum, “DiscriminativeLegislation Hinders Women’s Political Participation,” Yemen Times, March 3–5, 2008,http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1134&p=local&a=2.5SAF, Crimes of Honor in Yemen (Sana’a: SAF, May 2005), 31, in Arabic, http://saf-yemen.org/saf_books.asp?myid=30&safbok=79.6SAF, Shadow Report, 6.7N. M., “The Democratic School Condemn the Kidnapping of the Human Rights ActivistHanan al-Wada’ai by Security Members,” Sahwa Net, March 18, 2007, in Arabic, http://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/view_news.asp?sub_no=3_2007_03_18_55243.8Robert F. Worth, “Languishing at the Bottom of Yemen’s Ladder,” New York Times,February 27, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world/middleeast/27yemen.html. For more information, see Huda Seif, “The Accursed Minority: The Ethno-Cultural Persecution of Al-Akhdam in the Republic of Yemen: A Documentary &Advocacy Project,” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights 2, issue 1 (2005).