WSF Online Meeting- Yemen’s Conflict and Humanitarian Crisis: Women’s Experiences and Parliamentary Responses, 21 October 2025

On 21 October 2025, the Women for a Sustainable Future (WSF) network met online to discuss the gendered impacts of Yemen’s protracted conflict and worsening humanitarian crisis – the world’s second most impoverished country according to the World Bank.  

Amid a sharp decline in international attention and media coverage, the meeting provided a vital platform for Yemeni women’s voices to be heard by parliamentarians across the West Asia and North Africa region and Europe. The discussion emphasised the importance of locally led gender-responsive solutions to ensure more effective and sustainable responses to the crisis. 

The meeting was led by Yemeni women civil society leaders who shared first-hand accounts of the deteriorating conditions on the ground and presented policy recommendations to address the conflict’s disproportionate impacts on women and girls. Participants included parliamentarians, former parliamentarians, government advisors, academics, a journalist, civil society leaders, and gender, health, water, and sustainable development experts from Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Iraq, Ireland, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Yemen. 

Speakers described how over a decade of war has devastated public institutions and economic activity, leaving education and health systems chronically underfunded and millions without water, food, or livelihoods. Women and girls are among the worst affected: families are increasingly forced to sell their daughters for income, boys’ education is prioritised, and women resort to exploitative work to survive. Access to reproductive and maternal health care remains scarce or unaffordable, leading to preventable deaths and trauma. Insecurity is compounded by widespread displacement, violence by warring parties, disease outbreaks, and the continued presence of landmines. Forced disappearances and the imprisonment of women have also become increasingly pervasive, with no accountability. 

Key recommendations included re-engaging international organisations and donors whose humanitarian footprint in Yemen has diminished in recent years, supporting mine action and girls’ education, strengthening protection and reintegration for displaced, sexually abused, and imprisoned women, and increasing media coverage to ensure Yemen’s crisis is not forgotten. 

Arab News attended this meeting and published the following article on 22 October 2025: https://www.arabnews.com/node/2619861/saudi-arabia