Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Yemen

Yemen Policy Note 1: A Summary

Attachments

I. Introduction

  1. Yemen is subjected to a deepening conflict with an uncertain outlook for peace. The conflict in Yemen began in 2014 and escalated in early 2015 when the Houthi militias and their allied forces occupied large parts of the country and putting in jeopardy the then existing transition process that had been established in late 2011. A coalition of Saudi-led Arab forces (Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates) decided to intervene in March 2015 with the objective to return the country to the guiding parameters of the transition process as defined by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Agreement of late November 2011 and the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) of early 2014 (see also annex 3, page 29). The GCC agreement and its implementation mechanism ended the popular upheaval of 2011 in the wake of the Arabic Spring movement and provided for recommendations on a political transition in Yemen. The NDC outcomes of early 2014 offered a broadly shared consensus view on (1) what caused fragility in Yemen, (2) hindered development in Yemen in the past, and (3) recommendations and suggestions to address the identified weakness to build peace in Yemen and improve livelihood conditions in the country. The NDC underpinned architecture for peace building in Yemen and implementation of the NDC outcomes has therefore also been a key demand of the United National Security Council Resolution no. 2216 of April 14th, 2015, calling on the parties to return to a peace process based on the principles enshrined in the GCC agreement and the NDC outcomes.

  2. Yemen has witnessed cycles of violence and civil war since becoming a Republic in 1962. Over the last 50 years, and prior to 1990 also in form of North and South Yemen, Yemen has seen open societal violence, upheaval, and civil wars. Despite periods of relative and partial (regional) stability, the country rarely experienced a complete absence of violence. The current conflict continues this path and given its dimension, it is deepening societal fragility and fault lines in Yemen. Yemen’s cycles of violence originate from a mix of factors like long-standing grievances, corruption and elite capture of resources, exclusion, as well as tribal, regional, and more recently sectarian divisions. A cascading and pervasive patronage system, abused tribal norms and conventions, helped to facilitate periods of stability as much as they were abused to divide the country. The Yemeni state has therefore been grappling with establishing a viable central authority that enjoyed undivided legitimacy. As a result, creating a pluralistic political system within the framework of a unified nation-state that could mediate tension, grievances, conflicting objectives in a peaceful, structured and institutionalized way did emerge only in fragments and pockets of society. Modern institutions established since 1962, when Yemen abolished the Imanate and became a Republic, were not able to ensure equal opportunity, justice, and the rule of law.

  3. The oil economy and its rents financed an unsustainable use of resources, provided a diverse set of incentives for conflict, and laid the ground for the motives driving the events in 2011, the prelude to the current conflict. The emerging oil economy since the early 1990s offeredpreviously existing distortions in the economy, and adding new once, may it have been the vast state owned sector or the energy subsidy, or the non-sustainable use of water, e.g. for the vast expansion of qat cultivation since the 1980s.1 The resulting overall direction led to disappointing development outcomes.2 By the same token, long-standing vested interests, combined with a continuous control of economic rents by traditional and political forces and networks, have hindered and complicated a transition toward a more market driven economy and a more inclusive system of governance, respectively deepened existing fault lines and grievances in society. This has further eroded the trust in the state and its central institutions to deliver economic opportunity and growth, equal access, justice, and the rule of law.