Firewall

“When a woman enters any area for the first time, she bears the burden of the first step, and stands as the first wall of defence against shocks.” Nadia Al-Khulaifi

Nadia strode with confidence down the corridor of the court. Eyes watched her with mixed emotions: astonishment, contempt, respect, ridicule. She was the first woman in northern Yemen to break into the legal profession in a male-dominated society. She was a lawyer defending a girl accused of killing a man who had raped her.

Nadia did not only face society’s hostile attitude, but she had also to face the discrimination of her colleagues and bosses in the profession, who were the first to fight her when many of them refused to accept her training to practice law after she graduated from university in the eighties. She was denied the lawyer’s card by the authorities, except after the unification of Yemen, ten years after she graduated.

Only one judge encouraged her to get into this area of work. He encouraged others to respect her, while other judges underestimated her for being a woman. One of them didn’t even have the minimum educational qualifications for practicing as a judge, while she held a university degree as well as abundant abilities, skill, courage and humanity.

Nadia stood in the Court of Appeal. She checked her papers quickly, then stepped forward and straightened up confidently. Three years had passed since she started practicing law, during which she gained the courage and resolve to stand firmly to defend a wronged child and the rights of maltreated women. Yemen is a country that defends the offender when it comes to the honour of women, even if they are victims.

“Your Honour,” Nadia started her appeal. “This victim, who you put in the cage of the accused, is a girl who is just 13 years old. She has been raped and her rapist attempted to kill her. Is she imprisoned just because she defended herself, her honour, and her life? Before all that, she’s just a child, sir. Are children to be tried?”

“If she had not been a child she would have been sentenced to death, without trial or appeal,” said the judge harshly.

At the beginning of her career, her fellow lawyers did not want her to work with them. Nadia was shocked by the realisation that most men who defended the rights of women were the most likely to succumb to customs and traditions, and to fight women when they were strong and competed with them in their work.

“Do you kill a woman who defended her honour?” Nadia asked the lawyer of the accuser.

“Tell me where her parents are,” the lawyer asked her looking at the empty chairs. “Why did they not come today? They know she is an offender, she has brought shame on her family.”

“The girl you’re talking about, sir, was raped, as was confirmed by witness testimony, and was stabbed by her rapist, who tried to kill her. She defended herself. And now she became a criminal murderer only because she stands alone behind bars, because community customs and norms criminalise her, because she is a female?” she concluded.