Main activities
This past week, NDC members - including Secretary General Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak –continued making field visits to a number of locations in Aden, including public offices, security and military institutions and camps, prisons, the Aden Free Trade Zone, and Aden Port.
During these visits, the NDC members met with a wide variety of individuals from Aden, Lahj, Abyan and Dhale. They included governors and other local officials; military and security leaders; and representatives from the private sector, civil society organizations, youths, women, political parties, labor unions, and the Southern Movement.
The teams which visited Aden were from the Military and Security, National Issues and Transitional Justice, Independence of Special Entities, and Development Working Groups.
At Sana’a’s Movenpick Hotel - the NDC’s main site - most of the nine working groups completed discussions on final reports which focus on their past two months of activity.
The reports will be submitted at the NDC’s 2nd plenary a week later.
Visit to Aden
While in Aden, the NDC teams which visited public offices focused on and discussed matters of public concern. For their part, local officials demanded that issues surrounding Yemen’s centralized government – which they said negatively affected the performance of public offices - be addressed.
The local officials also stated that particular institutions, including the Civil Service, Tax and Zakat Collection Authorities, need to be allowed to govern their own affairs, and not merely act as extensions of government ministries.
A variety of ‘visions’ of how Yemen’s future state and institutions should be constructed were provided by the local officials. In written form, the officials submitted visions of Yemen’s national army and security forces, basic services provisions, and state structure and governance system.
Proposals were also provided on the matters of addressing insecurity, recovering illegally confiscated lands and reinstating wrongfully terminated southern military, security and civil service officials.
Among the main topics discussed during field visits were insecurity; the urgent needs of Aden’s prisons and security and intelligence services; challenges facing presidential committees tasked with addressing cases of illegally confiscated lands and wrongful terminations; and enforced disappearances, including those which occurred after the 1994 civil war.
During a team visit to the Gulf of Aden Ports Corporation, Executive Director Sami Fari demanded that the corporation be made completely independent. Fari also described challenges facing the development of Aden Port, including an ongoing situation in which plots of land at the port have been distributed to powerful figures under the pretext that in their hands, the portions of land would see increased investments.
On this note, Fari stated that all agreements signed with investors on plots of land within the port’s boundaries must be reconsidered; he added that a committee had been formed to address the deterioration of - and violations at - the port.
NDC members also met with the families of people who were killed, injured or disappeared during political conflicts, including in 2011. Others visited the Central Prison in Mansoura, heard from inmates and met with prison officials and the director of the Prison Authority.
Working group activities in Sana’a:
State-Building: The group discussed summarized visions of Yemen’s future state identity, structure, electoral system, administrative system, legislative power and judiciary. The group finalized a final draft report on its activities over the past two months and is now discussing and making notes on it. A team from the group visited Sana’a Central Prison this past week and received a detailed explanation of the inmates’ situations, including of those who started a hunger strike three days ago.
Good Governance: Group members completed discussions and voted on the contents of its final report, which includes recommendations for Yemen’s future constitution.
The constitutional items focused on illegal confiscations; the trading of and distribution of state property and resources; forbidding immunity for corrupt officials; the introduction of legislation covering the collection of taxes and customs fees; and appropriate responses to environmental dangers, among others.
This past Wednesday, the Malaysian, Indonesian and Pakistani Ambassadors to Yemen also visited the group and sat in on meetings.
Earlier in the week, members discussed group committee reports, which themselves contain proposals for additions to the constitution. The reports of the committees on the roles of parties and civil society organizations and on justice and equality met with approval from the group’s members.
Southern Issue: A Southern Movement representative presented a conception of the southern issue’s key components. Working group members also received a presentation on a field study concerning political parties’ visions of Yemen’s future governance system. The study was prepared by NDC member Jamila Ali Rajaa.
April Alley, from the International Crisis Group, also presented a report on the southern issue, entitled ‘The Breaking Point’ and originally published in 2011.
National Issues and Transitional Justice: Last week, group leadership received a national reconciliation and transitional justice draft law from the President of the Republic.
The group completed discussions on a draft of its final report on group activities over the past two months.
Also, a 13-member committee was formed for the purpose of reviewing proposed decisions on the final report draft.
Development: The group’s committees presented their final reports on their activities over the past two months. The committee members also led discussions on proposed amendments and objections to portions of their reports.
The group members decided to hear presentations of two committees’ reports on Saturday. Last week, group teams visited the Al-Saleh Foundation for Social Development, local administration office for Sana’a governorate and Sana’a’s western districts, as well as offices for the Islah Social Charitable Society and the Yemeni Women’s Union.
The group heard a lecture by Dr. Muhammad Halboob on the economy of the former southern People’s Democratic Republic. Halboob discussed a wide range of southern grievances since reunification in 1990.
Sa’ada Issue: This group heard from local citizens who experienced life in Sa’ada both before and after the governorate’s first war.
Group members also approved four out of eight points from a summarized conception of the Sa’ada issue’s ‘roots’ and referred points of contention to the NDC Consensus Committee.
The agreed-upon points concerned how a failed state, poor development, external meddling and historic disharmony among religious sects were behind the introduction of the issue.
A General People’s Congress representative presented a conception of the Sa’ada issue’s key components to the group. Furthermore, the group discussed community participation and contributions from locals in Amran’s Harf Sufyan district, women’s representatives, officials from associations in Marib, the Youth Cultural and Scientific Forum and the Sons of Sa’ada Organization.
Rights and Freedoms: Members completed discussions on approved items in the group’s final report, and on items concerning the subject of private rights and freedoms.
Chairwoman Arwa Abdu Othman asked all group factions to select two members each, who would come together to form a committee tasked with converting and modifying items which need to be amended.
The working group members also discussed items which they had been unable to reach consensus on. Those items which had less than 10% dissent were approved; those which drew 10% or higher rates of dissent were referred to the NDC Consensus Committee.
Independence of Special Entities: the group discussed the final report on its activities during the past two months that was focused on the state institutions agreed to be independent and topics of human rights, women and environment. The report suggested setting up independent high media council and civil service office and the group’s members agreed to vote on the report this Saturday.
It approved general rules of activities of supervisory institutions that included how the new constitution should include clear texts for independence of these institutions, organizing their performance and that nominations at them should take place through majority vote in Parliament.
The group heard to a proposal by Raidan Al-Saqqaf for forming a high youth council and a paper by expert Faisal Ahmed Qasim on environment and the official role to protect it.
Military and Security: Group members discussed a report of submitted by the committee on wrongful terminations and forced retirements. The report included recommendations in the areas of security, legislation and constitutional reform.
The Malaysian, Indonesian and Pakistani Ambassadors to Yemen also visited the group on Wednesday.
Vice German Ambassador to Yemen Philip Holsepfl delivered a lecture on the historic unification of West and East Germany’s armies and possible ways to address wrongful military terminations. He said Yemen could learn from Germany’s experience when the time to write a new constitution arrives.
Miscellaneous: NDC youth representatives provided a screening of a documentary film on the deadly burning of portions of Taiz’s Freedom Square. The screening was held on the 2nd anniversary of the incident.
A survey by PERCENT for Polling Research found 58% of the Yemeni people are interested in tracking the developments of the NDC. The survey targeted 1000 respondents in 19 governorates.
Presidential Board and Secretariat General:
NDC Secretary General Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak stated that the two committees tasked with addressing illegal land grabs and wrongful terminations in the south should ensure that, time-wise, they are advancing ahead of the NDC working groups; he said that if the committees failed to make progress, the broader outcomes of the NDC would be affected.
At a meeting in Aden, bin Mubarak said that major powers and regional nations were keen to help make the NDC a success and that efforts had been made to provide financial support for the two committees.
Presidential Board Rapporteur Abdullah Lamlas said that this coming week, the NDC Consensus Committee would begin reviewing the nine working groups’ final reports on activities over the past two months as a prelude to the submission of the reports at the NDC’s 2nd plenary.
The commission will address overlaps in the reports and return them to the working group in time for members to have an opportunity to analyze notes made on their reports before the plenary.
NDC Vice President Abdulkarim Al-Eryani said last week that the Good Governance Working Group efforts should be focused on addressing contradictions in Yemen’s current constitution and legislation.
NDC Second Deputy Secretary General Yassir Al-Roaini visited Sana’a Central Prison and acquainted himself with the situation of young people detained in connection with 2011’s peaceful revolution.
Al-Roaini also heard from young inmates who started a hunger strike inside the prison days ago.
“The visit comes in the wake of an order from President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to release those who were imprisoned without charges in connection with the 2011 revolution,” said Al-Roaini.
The Secretariat General was presented with a decorative shield representing this year’s graduating class from Sana’a’s Modern Sciences University. The class has taken on the nickname ‘the NDC Class’.
The attendance rate for NDC members this past week was 90%.
