Ramadan charities in Yemen,Religious ceremonies in mosques, assistance in kind to the needy [Archives:2005/884/Business & Economy]
Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
Phenomena of social solidarity in Yemen society are countless in the holy month of Ramadan. Some of them take in form of giving iftar (fast breaking) banquets in mosques or charitable centers on public squares and some them are in the form of assistance in kind or sums of money distributed to the poor and the needy. This phenomenon is attributed to the numerous non-governmental charitable organizations spread nationwide.
The main centers and branches of charitable foundations and societies amount to 2220 of various cultural, professional, scientific, social, friendship organizations and forums. Despite of the large-scale changes Yemen has witnessed since the unity on 2 May 1990, the march of charitable action began offering its services and developed until it reached a level of influential presence. But activities of charitable societies have begun to decrease during the past two tears for various reasons.
Charitable societies in Yemen use beforehand promotional advertisements on their Ramadan charity projects which reflect a new kind of expressing awakening of conscience of those philanthropists in the Yemeni society away from demands from authorities. But this orientation did not achieve its goals either because of some flaws in the societies activities or the incompletion of legal criteria of their foundation and mostly due to receipt of huge sums of money from the rich and not conveying them to those who deserve them.
In reference to reports of the ministry of social affairs and labour the number of civil society organizations and societies working in Yemen has reached at 4461 but only a little of this large number work on the arena and has tangible activity. The remainder is deeply inactive, though it is supposed that civil society organizations are supposed to play a prominent role parallel to the governmental role and both try to create a kind of humanitarian communication with the citizens and those organizations are almost closer to the citizen.
As the pluralist political activity in Yemen was associated with permission of free charitable action, the political problems Yemen have been facing throughout the post-unity years, led to the emergence of the humanitarian role of charitable societies but that was affected with the terrorist attacks on the United States of America.
Specialists mention that the painful economic doses Yemen has taken in its bid to reform economic failures have dealt a strong blow to the Yemeni person and created a general situation of poverty as a result of decline of the national currency, continuous rise of prices and spread of unemployment. Nonetheless, those interested in social solidarity view that charitable action should contribute to spreading of cultural, scientific and knowledge radiation in the country via the encouragement of the tendency of research and reading by organizing competition in reciting the Koran and the prophet's biography course and to support the excellent ones in this field.
Despite the huge number of charitable societies I Yemen there are many differences between them. Most of those societies make the sphere of their activity rather narrow and confined to one of the big mosques or a certain residential area or district and few of them are active nationwide. These are very little in number. Nationwide activity societies extend to other aspects as education, medicine and offering in kind assistance as well as supporting mass marriage projects.
Among these societies is the Al-Saleh Social Society, a pioneering one in siding with the needy and the poor, competing with the Charitable Social Reform Society which until recently was the sole one in various huge activities in all Yemeni governorates. Beneficiaries from the latter society's charitable services since its foundation in 1990 amounted to more than six million families. There are other second- place societies that active mainly in Ramadan such as the Popular Charitable Society and the societies of Al-Hikma and Al-Ihsan.
Specialists in this regard view that a big part of the charitable work is based on Islamic bases like the social solidarity and offering help to widows, orphans and the poor. Thus the whole question is not immune against partisan auctioning and bickering. It is often that some political forces point their accusations at the charitable societies as being non-innocent facades for political profit and their real purpose is buying loyalty of citizens, but their acts indicate that the degree of extension of their charitable action and variety and continuity of their fields confirm correctness of those societies charitable projects aimed at the social solidarity.
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