The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms reported that the so-called Zainabiyat Brigades, a woman military wing of the Houthi militia, carried out greater than 1,400 violations in opposition to civilians between December 2017 and October of the year 2022.

According to its report published by the official Saba News Agency, the Yemeni Network added that Houthi Zainabiyat carried out 1,444 violations, including arresting and detaining women arbitrarily, looting private property, sexual assault, beating, torture, and facilitating the rape of women in secret detention centers.

The report indicated that "the Zainabiyat carried out a number of operations to track down Yemeni activists and assault the women protesting in some Governorates controlled by the terrorist militia, in addition to distributing the Zainabiyat members to checkpoints at the entrances and exits of some cities, as well as the forced recruitment of some school and university girls."

The report verified that the Zainabiyat Brigades have been implicated in the killing of 9 women, including 6 cases as an end result of extreme beatings with batons and copper cables, 3 cases as an end result of direct gunfire, as properly as the Zainabiyat Brigades caused the injury of 42 women with separate injuries.

Also, the Yemeni network mentioned in its report that it had documented about 172 cases of violations carried out by the Zainabiyat Brigades. The violations were distributed as follows: 31 cases of raids on service and health facilities, 76 cases of raids and inspections of educational facilities (schools and universities), and 65 cases of raids on places of worship and Quran memorization centers.

The human rights report drew attention to the Zainabiyat Brigades’ arrest and kidnapping of about 571 ladies, while there are still 231 female detainees in the prisons of the Houthi group supervised by the Zainabiyat, whose information and data have been verified.

The report noted that the Zainabiyat subjected about 62 women (detained, abducted, and forcibly disappeared) to psychological and physical torture inside Houthi prisons, which are supervised by these Zainabiyats, recruitment of about 4,000 Zainabiyats received combat training in Sana'a, and some of these Zainabiyats received training in Lebanon and Iran by experts from Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

According to the Yemeni Network report, the Houthi militia has assigned the Zainabiyat Brigades with many tasks, the most prominent of which is focused on incitement, indoctrination and sectarian prompting through giving lectures, lessons, and courses to groups of women and girls in every Directorate and neighborhood in the Governorates controlled by the militia, whether in mosques or in citizens’ homes and public halls such as schools and celebration gatherings held by Houthi militias, as well as activity in social media to promote the group’s ideology.

It should be noted here that the Zainabiyat are a group of highly trained Houthi women who carry out incursions, arrest women activists, and break up demonstrations and vigils, in addition to other special tasks entrusted to them such as spying, catching opponents, monitoring opinions and prosecuting women activists in private sessions and workplace.