Slavery in Yemen

It was reported that at least 85,000 people were enslaved in Yemen in 2022, and due to the impossibility of conducting further surveys in the midst of the ongoing civil war, this number may be underestimated.

[3] Not unlike previous times, slaves are inherited by their owners through family, as well as being bought and sold.

In a sense, slavery has been formally recognised in Yemen, through a judge in the Courts confirming the transfer of a slave from one owner to another.

The wicked merchants appear, examining her hands, feet, calves, thighs, navel, chest and breasts.

So they attend in front of the judge and one makes a claim against the other, [suggesting there is] a defect [in the slave girl].In the 1760s the Yemeni Hadhrami Arab Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie mass enslaved other Muslims while raiding coastal Borneo in violation of sharia, before he founded the Pontianak Sultanate.

Upon their refusal the Lady Canning would open fire shooting deliberately near the important fort of Siyara.

Of these towns, Kurrum is the most important, from its possessing a tolerable harbour, and from its being the nearest point from Aden, the course to which place is N.N.W., consequently the wind is fair, and the boats laden with sheep for the Aden market pass but one night at sea, whilst those from Berbera are generally three.

In the 1960s, the King and Imam of Yemen, Ahmad bin Yahya (r. 1948-1962) were reported to have had a harem of 100 slave women.

In the Middle Ages they mainly came from Africa and underwent the dangerous operation in Ethiopia before being imported to Yemen.

Eunuchs were bought by aristocrats and royalty and could be given a number of different assignments: as administrators and agents of the affairs of the harem and royal women, as teachers and caretakers of children, and as supervisors of the rest of the slaves.

The deal between the native states and Britain detailed protection and complete control of foreign relations by the British.

In 1932, the League of Nations asked all member countries to include anti-slavery commitment in any treaties they made with all Arab states.

The report to ACE about Hadhramaut described the existence of Chinese girls (Mui tsai) trafficked from Singapore for enslavement as concubines, Indian women trafficked to Hadrhamaut to be sold by their husbands, and Indian children officially taken there for religious studies, only to be sold upon arrival.

[35] The British tried to convince the coastal local rulers of the Aden Protectorate to sign an agreement to ban the slave trade, but by January 1939, few had done so.

By the nineteenth century, an increasing number of countries such as The Netherlands were banning participation with the African Slave Trade, and soon after abolished slavery in all of its colonies, along with France.

[37] After World War II, there was a growing international pressure from the United Nations to end the slave trade in the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1948, the United Nations declared slavery to be a crime against humanity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (DHR), after which the Anti-Slavery Society pointed out that there were about one million slaves in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a crime against the 1926 Slavery Convention, and demanded that the UN form a committee to handle the issue.

Friend referred—investigated the situation and found that every year ignorant Africans are lured on by agents to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

When they arrive in Saudi Arabia without a visa they are arrested and put into prison for a few days and then handed over to licensed slave dealers.

In addition, raids are made in Baluchistan and the Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and people are captured and carried off by land and sea, taken to small Saudi Arabian ports and sold in slave markets.In 1962, Yemen was one of the last countries worldwide to abolish slavery.

The first is general human trafficking, which can be defined as adults or children lured into a situation that results in their exploitation, by way of threats, violence or deliberate misrepresentation, and then forced to perform certain jobs.

Such abuse has been reported to be depriving slaves of a basic right of access to water, unless their owner permits it.

[50] As well as child slavery, it has been discovered that there are also adult slaves who are controlled by their owners, who work in private homes, made to perform certain tasks.

This means any children of existing slaves are led to believe the same as their parents – that they are not entitled to freedom and they must do as they are told by their owners.