Peace Messages

“There will be no comprehensive peace if there is no peace at the community level.” Sumaya Al Hossam

The poor old woman welcomed Sumaya with a piece of dry bread – Sumaya knew that the woman did not have anything else. Sumaya was visiting this remote village as a social worker for the Social Fund of Development. The old woman looked at her with an embarrassed smile as Sumaya put the piece of bread in her mouth and chewed it despite its hardness, then smiled back gratefully at the only woman who had this as her only daily food.

Sumaya heard stories of women in these isolated villages, and decided to do something to save them, and to help them, to improve their living conditions, determined to stand by them as they faced violence, persecution and denial of their rights.

Sumaya was born and lived in Hajjah province. She studied law in Sana’a, despite the traditions of her conservative family, who objected to her moving to student housing far from her village. But she managed, in her distinctive style, which later on helped her to become a lawyer, to convince them to give her this chance, which would enable her to defend the rights of children and women, and to work to achieve the justice she dreamt of.

After graduating from university Sumaya joined training courses in the field of human rights and peace making. She worked as a researcher and consultant with the Social Fund for Development, visiting remote areas to help women there, and to communicate their issues and problems to those responsible. Sumaya wanted to use more effective ways to convey women’s voice, so she ran for parliamentary elections for membership of the House of Representatives in her constituency. She was first woman to engage in such an encounter in the conservative province of Hajjah. However, the events of 2011 stopped the elections.

Sumaya joined the National Dialogue Conference in 2014 and began to think about extending the limits of her ambition to achieve peace in Yemen. But the 2015 war stopped the National Dialogue, so she decided to fight her battle directly from her platform, without waiting for an official post to help her out.

There had been battles of vengeance between two tribes in the province of Hajjah since 2002, with many parties attempting to intermediate between them for fifteen years, to no avail. Many people had been killed or wounded.

Sumaya believed that ending this small war would solve many similar issues, and could perhaps be a first step to ending the war that had taken hold of her country. So she decided to contribute to efforts the end it. She learnt the detailed history of these battles in full; she got in touch with specialists from the Ministry of Justice to become familiar the legal aspects of these issues; she talked to local people in the region to know what was happening; she learnt the stories of the victims who were killed from both sides because of revenge, and counter revenge.

Sumaya got in touch with former mediators between the parties to the conflict and contacted 50 people from both sides. She then began to open the lines of communication between them, invoking the desire of all to achieve peace.

In 2015 Sumaya began to send phone messages to 100 people from the two conflicting tribes. The messages, from this woman they did not know, continued for nine months, calling for peace. She contacted politicians and national decision makers and put the issue on the negotiating table, once again.

One year and two months later, after the start of her reconciliation efforts, the warriors of the two sides shook hands. In 2016, after fourteen years of fighting, peace was restored between the two tribes, with both parties deciding to put their weapon away.

Sumaya is currently working on programmes that engage women in peacemaking processes as intermediaries. Not merely a defender of rights by raising awareness, she believes in women’s ability to make peace because of human perception, in which she believes women are superior to men.