Between fear and resistance: How public assassinations are silencing Yemen's women

On the morning of 18 September 2025, Dr Iftihan Al-Mashhari was driving through Taiz when unidentified gunmen shot her at close range, killing her instantly. As director of the city's Sanitation and Improvement Fund, al-Mashhari had been locked in an open struggle with military power centres seeking control over the fund's resources.

Weeks before her death, she reported receiving direct threats to authorities but was granted no protection.

Her assassination in broad daylight shocked Taiz, sparking widespread women's protests demanding that the killers be identified and held accountable. But, as in similar cases, the investigation dissolved into a vortex of conflict and mutual accusations.

Weeks later, in Sanaa, on 31 October, Dr Wafa Al-Makhlafi was assassinated outside a currency exchange in the capital's centre, in full view of passersby and cameras. In January 2025, teacher Nisreen Adeeb was killed in Aden by her ex-husband as she boarded the school bus, despite having filed repeated complaints to police about his threats. Journalist Rasha Abdullah, eight months pregnant, was killed in 2021 when a bomb exploded in her car in Aden while covering humanitarian issues far from political polarisation.

"We live between constant fear and heavy silence," said one Yemeni activist, who preferred anonymity for security reasons. "Every word can be used against us, every public appearance might be our last."

 "The threat isn't limited to bullets—it begins with suspicious looks and moral defamation on social media, and extends to threats inside homes. Many women who were leaders in civil society work have withdrawn completely, or work under pseudonyms, because society no longer protects them and the state no longer exists," she added.

Individual crime as a widespread phenomenon

According to the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, 5,618 violations against women were documented between January 2017 and July 2025 across 17 governorates, most committed by the Houthi group. The Sana'a Centre for Strategic Studies views Al-Mashhari's assassination as representing "the peak of a wave of systematic violence against women in decision-making positions," warning that impunity "threatens to bury reform efforts and women's empowerment in Yemen for decades to come."

In this context, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) indicates that 6.2 million women and girls in Yemen are at risk of violence in 2025, suffering from a severe lack of basic protection and humanitarian services, including reproductive healthcare. More than five million women and girls of childbearing age receive only limited services, while maternal mortality rates in Yemen remain the highest in the Middle East.

This reality reflects that violence against women is neither individual nor random, but linked to the decade-long ongoing conflict, the collapse of basic services, and declining state capacity to protect citizens, especially women.

Judge Ishraq Al-Maqtari, spokesperson for Yemen's National Commission for Investigation of Human Rights Violations, noted that "the level of crime and violence has risen in most Yemeni governorates without exception, though assassination crimes increase significantly in Houthi-controlled areas. Before the war, such incidents were very rare, and assassinating a woman was considered a major disgrace in tribal and social values. But the security breakdown and multiple armed groups changed everything."

"In the last two years, 2024 and 2025, we've noticed a striking escalation in targeting women working in official or civil positions. In many cases, the killer belongs to a security or influential entity, and no one is held accountable. What unites all these crimes is the general motive, impunity, and culture of violence—as if killing women has become the price for their participation in public life," she added to The New Arab.

War on women's bodies

Balqees Al-Lahbi, political activist and researcher at the Sana'a Centre for Strategic Studies, sees women's assassinations in Yemen as part of an intertwined social and political structure.

"The assassinations aren't isolated incidents. There are those who want to remove women from public space by any means—through incitement, defamation, blackmail, or direct killing. After Iftihan al-Mashhari's assassination, nine women refused to take the same position. This itself is an assassination of opportunity, of confidence, of women's dream of public work," she said to TNA.

Al-Lahbi described this violence as a "war conducted on women's bodies".

"What's happening is the reproduction of patriarchal hegemony through more violent means. Women today are threatened everywhere in Yemen—at work, in media, in education, and even within their families," she added.

"Executive positions are exposed to severe dangers, where some women occupy sensitive executive posts, such as Misk Al-Maqrami, who contributed to many relief and service activities, and Ilan Abdulhaq, who survived an assassination attempt in 2018 and was recently appointed acting director of the Sanitation Fund in Taiz after Iftihan al-Mashhari's assassination, despite the severe dangers she may face performing her duties. This is in addition to repeated attempts at reputation-smearing targeting prominent women leaders, such as Dr Alfat Al-Dubai. These conditions reflect how dangerous the war is for women in Yemen, where no woman is safe any more, whether in various sectors, social classes, or geographical areas, making the general situation for them increasingly frightening and threatening," al-Lahbi further noted.

"Therefore, we launched a protection strategy at the Sana'a Centre based on three pillars: first, rebuilding the positive narrative about women in media; second, providing legal frameworks for immediate protection; and third, economic and psychological empowerment so women aren't forced to withdraw under pressure," she concluded.

For her part, Nadia Al-Saqqaf, former editor-in-chief of Yemen Times and Yemen's first female Minister of Information, remarked to TNA that "today's threat is no longer just physical killing, but digital violence and moral defamation—effective tools for silencing women or pushing them to withdraw. This type of violence is more dangerous because it's invisible and infiltrates your daily life."

"Since 2014, we've seen escalating hate speech against women working in media and civil society, and social stigma transformed into a deterrent tool. The result is women's gradual withdrawal from public space or working behind the curtain under pseudonyms. The solution begins with three pillars: immediate protection, possible accountability, and societal deterrence through new discourse that restores women's respect in public space," she added.

Tawfiq Al-Humaidi, president of SAM Organisation for Rights and Freedoms, sees women's assassinations in Yemen transcending the individual dimension to a complete social exclusion project.

"Every crime against a working woman or activist sends a message of fear to others: stay away from public space. Over time, this message transforms into a societal culture that justifies withdrawal in the name of protection, so the family itself becomes part of the exclusion process," said al-Humaidi.

Al-Humaidi notes that "assassinations aren't separate incidents, but rather a means to return women to the margins. With weak female representation in the judiciary and security, justice becomes unattainable. Many women don't report threats because they don't trust institutions, and some emigrate abroad or completely retire from public work. In this sense, we face double assassination: assassination of the body and assassination of the message."

"In Houthi-controlled areas, ideological and political motives dominate, where women activists in education, media, and relief are targeted under pretexts of 'faith identity' and 'morals,' using apparatuses like the 'Zainabiyat' to monitor and arrest them. In areas under the internationally recognised government, motives usually relate to influence, corruption, and competition over resources. Crimes are executed by unidentified gunmen using motorcycles, amid almost complete absence of accountability," he further added.

He sees that the result in both cases is the same: fear that silences women's voices, and absent justice that entrenches impunity.

Despite the grim affairs, local women's and human rights organisations are trying to formulate protection alternatives, from secret hotlines to community awareness initiatives, like what activist Balqees al-Lahbi discussed regarding the women's protection strategy.

"We still count on Yemeni women regaining their rights to presence and participation, but the greatest danger today is that fear transforms into a norm, and silence into an eternal culture," Judge Ishraq al-Maqtari concluded. 

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.