Source: National Yemen
Produced for Yemeni TV, short film raises awareness of the issues surrounding women and the security and justice sector in Yemen.

Women have an essential role to play in linking the security forces with communities, helping the security sector become more gender-sensitive and ensuring that internal police procedures promote equality and fairness. Yet social norms and traditional prejudices are challenging women's capacity to work within the sector, particularly as police and prison officers.

Featuring interviews with staff from the police, the Reform and Rehabilitation Authority, and the Ministry of Interior the film highlights the need for a more responsive security sector, which is developed through reform processes that include women's perspectives and respond to women's specific security concerns.

Presenting the experiences of male and female security personnel, the film describes women's contributions to security forces, the opportunities available to them, and their hopes and impressions about society's influence on women's capacity to take part in building security in Yemen. As Colonel Abdullah al-Hakim, General Director at the Care Reform and Rehabilitation Department at the Reform and Rehabilitation Authority states: "When policewomen worked with women, the results were very positive".

The Interior Ministry intends to establish a special station for women police. The Undersecretary of the Interior Ministry for Criminal Security Gen. Mohammed Mansour Al-Gadara said that the Ministry began planning to establish special stations for women police in many governorates in order to address female issues, especially because traditions sometimes become an obstacle in front of some women to deliver their complaints to the police stations, adding a hotline to receive complaints of women and to provide the necessary services for them.

"The number of police women in the Ministry is 2,908. 108 of them are officers carrying several ranks. They work in different departments of the security devices," added Al-Gadara

Al-Gadara explained that some family issues are sensitive and can't be discussed in public, so people go to the heads of neighborhoods and sheikhs to resolve them, which leads to complicating the issue because these bodies don't give women their rights.

Al-Gadara emphasized that security services are working to serve all citizens and they seek to find a true partnership with the community to provide security and stability.