Peer-reviewed article
Violence against women and children in Yemen: A mixed-methods systematic review
Shreedhar S, Arvind Chavan S, Al-Zumair M, Naccache M, Shreedhar P et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This systematic review synthesized evidence from 31 qualitative and quantitative studies on violence against women and children in Yemen, including intimate partner violence, female genital mutilation, early marriage, and honor violence. The review found high prevalence rates of many forms of violence and documented significant gaps in research ethics reporting, including lack of safety planning and mental health support for research participants. Only one study was conducted after Yemen's 2014 war began, despite the country experiencing the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The review identifies urgent need for research on how ongoing conflict has affected prevalence of violence against children.
Key points
- Forms of violence identified include honor violence, female genital mutilation, early and very early marriage, tourist marriage, intimate partner violence, and gender inequities in access to food, education, and medical care
- High prevalence of corporal punishment in schools and intimate partner violence was reported across included studies
- Several included studies did not report ethics review or interviewer training; no studies discussed safety planning or mental health support for research participants
- Only one study was identified that was initiated after Yemen's 2014 war began, despite it becoming the world's largest humanitarian crisis
- The ongoing war is suspected to have reversed prior gains in reducing child and very early child marriage and introduced new forms of gender-based violence
Limitations
The review does not provide data on the effectiveness of interventions to reduce violence, as it synthesizes epidemiological and descriptive evidence. The severe scarcity of post-2014 war research means the review cannot reliably characterize how conflict has changed prevalence patterns or the emergence of new forms of violence against children.
Abstract
Violence against women and children (VAWC) is a significant health and human rights issue closely tied to multiple Sustainable Development Goals. While VAWC is prevalent in all countries, the severity and incidence of VAWC increase during wars, natural disasters, economic crises, and pandemics, all of which have affected Yemen in recent years. This systematic review synthesizes evidence from qualitative and quantitative studies on the types, prevalence, perpetrators of, and risk factors for VAWC in Yemen. Before initiating the search, the protocol and search strategy were registered to PROSPERO (CRD42021237855). We systematically searched four biomedical databases and grey literature sources and used reverse snowball sampling to identify eligible studies. The 31 studies included in the analysis depicted a range of forms of VAWC, encompassing honor violence, female genital mutilation and cutting, early and very early marriage, tourist marriage, family and intimate partner violence, and gender inequities in access to food, education, and medical care. Included studies reported a high prevalence of many forms of violence, including corporal punishment in schools and intimate partner violence. We reviewed study quality and how studies addressed ethical concerns in VAWC-related research. We found that several studies did not report ethics review or interviewer training and no studies discussed safety planning or addressing the mental health needs of participants in VAWC research. This systematic review provides a much-needed synthesis of existing research on VAWC in Yemen. Since the start of the 2014 war, Yemen has become the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with the highest rate of maternal mortality and gender inequality in the world. We only identified one study initiated after the recent war in Yemen. This deficiency represents a missed opportunity to understand how the ongoing war has reversed prior gains in reducing the prevalence of child and very early child marriage and introduced new forms of gender-based violence, including tourist marriage.