Maeen is a Yemeni cis man who became an anti-child-soldier activist during the earlier years of the Yemeni civil war, subsequently becoming the civil servant with responsibility for child services in the city of Taiz. This made him the enemy of all the warring factions due to his opposition to child recruitment, and he was subsequently imprisoned and tortured. His friends secured his release, and in the year before Trans Rescue was founded Anne helped him escape his hiding place for Egypt, with her own money. This year we were able to help him obtain humanitarian asylum in France, he is now in the French asylum system, and learning French.

Why are we, an organization dedicated to helping transgender people, helping a straight cis man?  When we formed Trans Rescue we asked ourselves what to do with Maeen. We decided trans people were better than that, we weren’t abandoning someone who was in danger because he helped children. What we couldn’t reveal then was that he also performed a vital role for us as our Arabic-speaking man on the ground who helped us considerably with our work. We can not thank him enough for this service and we are thus very pleased to have been able to help him reach safety.

We delayed this report for a while to make sure of his safety.  We last described Maeen when he was still in Egypt.