PREGUNTAS FRECUENTES

Young offenders comprise a very small percentage of statistically recorded crime rates in Yemen. However, the number of documented offences committed by young people under the age of 18 has shown a continual increase from the year 2003 onwards (See Figure 4297_{). There are many}

possible explanations for this trend. Firstly, as the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Yemeni Ministry of Health and Population assert, only 22.3% of children were registered at the time of their birth in 2006, leaving another estimated 77.7% without any proof of age or identity. UNICEF et al write that, while “There is no variation in birth registration between male and female children”, “Children living in the rural households ... are less likely to have their births registered than children living in urban areas (16.4 percent versus 38.2 percent)”, as are

97 _{This graph is compiled from data published in the Central Statistical Organisation’s Security and Justice}

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children born to impoverished households when compared to those born in wealthier ones (where “birth registration took place in only 5 percent of the poorest households compared to 50.4 percent in the richest households”) (2006, p. 54).

Figure 42 Criminal Cases Where Culprits Were Tried as Juveniles and Adults

As a result, it is extremely “difficult for many juvenile offenders to prove their age at the time of the offence, and in these situations courts sometimes sentence to death persons under age 18 at the time of the crime” (Human Rights Watch, 2008, p. 16) or incorrectly process minors as adults through the criminal court system. The Human Rights Watch observes that in “February 2007, Yemen executed Adil Muhammad Saif al-Ma'amari for a crime allegedly committed when he was 16” and that “At least 18 other juvenile offenders are believed to be on death row”, despite Yemen's stated stance against the death penalty in cases where children and young people under the age of 18 are the suspected culprits (p. 16). On the one hand, the low rate of identification of children and young people in Yemen has led directly to a low rate of identification of young offenders and to an under-representation of young offenders in official statistics. On the other hand, Government concern for young people, as well as steady donor funding to the Ministries of Justice and Health and Population, has led to a push to increase birth registration through awareness-raising and to increase funding for medical age-identification processes, leading to some minimal growth in the number of young offenders correctly identified as children over the past few years (although it should be several more years before newly registered children grow old enough for the effect of policies aimed at promoting birth registration to have a visible impact upon youth justice statistics). These realities account for a low rate of recorded offences committed by young people, and for a gradual increase in those figures.

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 23418 96% 30310 96% 32935 95% 32897 94% 33284 90% 35668 89% 36030 90% 988 4% 1401 4% 1721 5% 2127 6% 3610 10% 4489 11% 4060 10% T ota l R e g is tered C rim e s Where C ulprits Were T ried a s Adults T ota l N um be r of R e cog nis e d Juv e n- iles Accus ed of C om m itting a C rim - ina l Offe nc e

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Secondly, low identification of young offenders can be attributed to displacement, where large-scale population movements caused by conflicts and natural disasters in Yemen have resulted in the loss of any existing documentation, as well as the separation of children and young people from their parents and families, so that many of them are no longer aware of their own ages and fail to question authority figures who process them as adult offenders.

Finally, cultural conceptions of childhood differ substantially in Yemen to those adopted by the Western world, so that many young people under the age of 18 consider themselves – and are generally perceived – to be adults, remaining unaware of their entitlement to more lenient judicial processes. A combination of these three factors means that it is virtually impossible to produce an accurate estimate of the actual number of young offenders in Yemen, though it is relatively safe to assume that their number greatly exceeds that which is documented. Interestingly, this means that many children and young people are also classified as adults when they are found to be the victims of crime.

Figure 43 Reported Juvenile Offending in Yemen, 2009

Although it is not possible to document fully the extent of the young offending problem in Yemen, it is possible to extrapolate a picture of offending patterns among children and young people, taking detected and recognised young offenders as a representative sample group of the

Murder, Attempted Murder and Manslaughter Battery, Light Battery and Battery Leading to Deformity Negligence and Reckless Endangerment Rape, Attempted Rape and Aggravated Adultery Kidnapping Assault Burglary, Breaking and Entering, and Aggravated Burglary Theft, Attempted Pickpocketing and Aggravated Robbery Vehicle Theft Identity Theft, Fraud and Dishonesty Banditry Racketeering Intentional Explosion, Arson and Failing to Put Out a Fire Destruction or Defacement of Public Property Morality Crime, Including Adultery and Homosexuality Public Indecency Prostitution Insult and Assault on a Person's Private Life Crimes Against the State Possession, Sale and Use of Illegal Narcotics and Alcohol Possession of Unlicensed Weapon Counterfeiting Money Wasting Public Time, Interrupting Public Processes Escaping Custody Violation of Immigration and Passport Law s Violation of Environmental Law s Violation of Other Law s

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 363 1372 91 131 7 64 328 403 46 47 2 4 44 167 168 78 3 31 16 20 10 7 56 5 102 8 27

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greater undetected or misclassified whole. Figure 43 provides a breakdown of recorded offences committed by children and young people. It reveals a strong tendency among young offenders towards violent crime, which represented, in 2009, 53.81% of offences committed specifically by young people, as opposed to 48.40% of all offences committed by everyone that year. This indicates a disproportional trend towards violent behaviour among people under the age of 18.

While it is not unusual for juvenile offending records in most countries to display a high percentage of crimes against the person (ranging from assault with no injury to robbery and assault with injury), it is extremely rare for such rates to represent over 50% of juvenile offences – and rarer still for crimes like murder, attempted murder or even manslaughter to be listed among them. In Yemen, in 2009, crimes against the person, including violent and sexual crimes, rose above this percentage, while murder, attempted murder and manslaughter accounted for 10.08% of their offences. The figure is staggering, particularly in light of the Yemeni Government's separation of criminal and so-termed “political” violence in official data. While mistakes are certainly possible under their classification system, it is relatively safe to assume that a significant portion of the 363 murder, attempted murder and manslaughter cases detected in 2009 cannot be related to on-going conflicts in the country.

There is also a higher general tendency towards female offending among young offenders in Yemen than there is among the general population. Thus, in 2009, young women accounted for 209 of the 4,060 young offenders detected by the state, representing 5.15% of offenders under the age of 18, as opposed to the national average of 1.50%. This trend could be associated with increasing social mobility among younger generations of women in Yemen, promoted through increased access to education98. In general, young offending among women in Yemen is predominantly grouped around adultery-related offences, violations of immigration laws and cases of light assault, leaving boys and young men as the main body of violent offenders among under 18 year old people in the country.