Yemen’s civil war has been ongoing since 2015, with an estimated death toll as high as 100,000 including more than 12,000 civilian deaths (Magdy, 2019). It has now been recognised as the worst humanitarian crisis globally with over 20 million people in Yemen facing food insecurity and 14 million requiring some form of urgent humanitarian assistance (UNHCR, 2019). However, the current dynamics of the war have prevented much needed assistance from reaching those most in need. Whilst initially a localised conflict within Yemen, this has since escalated into a regional proxy conflict with Saudi-Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran backing various groups. Additionally, with the political chaos and insurgencies from Houthis rebels and separatist groups against the Yemeni government, a power vacuum has been created that has permitted the growth of extremist groups such as AQAP to secure territory. Further action must be taken to help address the stabilisation of the region if we are to resolve the acute humanitarian crisis, address widespread violations of human rights and international law, and instigate longer term objectives of maintaining sustainable peace and security in Yemen for the future.
Main Obstacles to Conflict Resolution
-The number of actors
The number of actors with diverse goals and their continually changing allegiances makes conflict resolution more challenging in Yemen. Research has highlighted that civil wars with more actors tend to last longer as there are fewer acceptable agreements for negotiated settlements due to the presence of veto players (Cunningham, 2006). These players suffer from commitment issues whereby they struggle to uphold agreements and can ‘spoil’ them by actively hindering or undermining them. Indeed, the 2016 UN-sponsored Yemen peace discussions proved unsuccessful as actors could not agree on a plan (Dadouch, 2019).
-International support and intervention
Foreign states’ involvement and support for different groups escalates and prolongs the war further. For instance, the UK and US continue to supply the SLC with arms, whilst Iran allegedly supplies the opposite Houthis forces and UAE supply the STC (Perlo-Freeman, 2019).
-Security dilemmas[1] that ultimately lead to intervention
Anarchy in the Middle East has led to existential uncertainty and power struggles between states; Iran and Saudi-Arabia continue to support fighting through proxy in Yemen to secure influence, power and ultimately security. This prolongs the war as it adds further motivations for conflict, due to retaliation and counter-hostilities to defend their security (Posen, 1993)
-Grievances
Grievances provide further motivation for conflict and therefore act as an obstacle to conflict resolution (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). The initial Yemeni Revolution originated from a lack of political rights, unemployment, economic weaknesses and corruption (Juneau, 2016) and the Hadi government failed to address this ultimately justifying Houthis motivations to fight.
Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Cease-fire between all groups
Cease-fires are a popular approach despite research suggesting they create less durable peace than the controversial approach of rebel victories, for example. Like negotiated settlements they also suffer from the same commitment and spoiler issues associated with several veto players and therefore may have issues surrounding practicality. For instance, the 2018 Hodeidah ceasefire established to maintain peace and allow for the emergence of key passages for humanitarian needs, still remains unfulfilled and the majority of shelling continues to take place in this area, with breaches of the ceasefire alleged on all sides (Wintour, 2019). However, academics still support ceasefires, highlighting that they can be durable if they meet the following criteria (which attempted cease-fires have so-far omitted in Yemen) (Fortna, 2003):
-Alter incentives for conflict: by increasing the costs of conflict politically or physically e.g. signing of a formal agreement bound by international law, withdrawal of troops from the front line or creation of a buffer zone.
-Reduce uncertainty about actions and intentions: by identifying precise terms of the ceasefire e.g. stipulating exact locations of ceasefire lines.
-Control inadvertent violations of the ceasefire: by providing continuous negotiation and dispute resolution measures e.g. forums for resolving misunderstandings or buffer zones to mitigate their occurrence to begin with.
Indeed, the Hodeidah agreement has been criticised as lacking precision and not stipulating geographical limits (Wintour, 2019). Therefore, if these and future deals are to be successful and the UN are to capitalise on pre-invested policies, the Hodeidah agreement should be amended to meet these terms and future ceasefires must meet these criteria. Whilst, getting all groups to the table is likely to be challenging, incentives such as development aid to identified parties may serve to mitigate such challenges.
Forced Disarmament
Forced Disarmament involves compulsory gathering and disposal of privately supplied weapons of all groups, by force if necessary. Through removing combatants’ capacity to fight it has been highlighted as an effective approach to conflict resolution by scholars (Zhukov, 2016). However, ultimately it does not address the underlying grievances of the conflict and there is a lack of empirical study on this approach making its generalisability to Yemen less certain. Thus, reintegration policies that also address the political marginalisation of Houthis, corruption and economic weakness must also be adopted in tandem. Yet, it must also be implemented diligently and disarm all groups so targeting by non-disarmed groups does not occur.
The forced disarmament of foreign actors such as the UAE and Saudi-led Coalition may be achieved by passing another resolution to prevent any kind of military support to any combatant or imposing an arms embargo preventing the UK and US supplying these actors. This will also help disarm AQAP which acquires weaponry indirectly (and allegedly directly) from Saudi Arabia (Elbagir et al, 2019).
Disarming the alleged Iran-supplied Houthis may be challenging due to what is likely to be a covert smuggling operation. The Security Council must take punitive action in this case, such as economic sanctions against Iran to counter this as they are in noncompliance with Resolution 2216, which prohibits direct or indirect supply of weaponry to Houthis (Gladstone, 2018).
References;
Collier, P., Hoeffler. A., (2004) Greed and grievance in civil war, Oxford economic papers, 56(4), pp.563-595
Cunningham. D.E., (2006), Veto players and civil war duration, American Journal of Political Science, 50(4), pp.875-892.
Dadouch. S., (2019), UN-sponsored peace talks for Yemen, Reuters, [online], Available at:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-yemen-factbox-idUSKCN1J31M9?fbclid=IwAR0tXkYQGd1lk8hs-jj6VVybjZMg0MhLKpcu0-RK5sW1oiFq_F6dDPDsXE, Accessed: 2/02/20
Elbagir.N., Abdelaziz. S., Abo El Gheit. M., Smith. L. (2019), Sold to an ally, lost to an enemy, CNN, [online], Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/02/middleeast/yemen-lost-us-arms/, Accessed: 20/02/20
Fortna V. P., (2003), Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace, International Organization 57 (2): pp 337-372
Gladstone. R., (2018), Iran Violated Yemen Arms Embargo, U.N. Experts Say, The New York Times, [online], Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-yemen-saudi-arabia-arms-embargoun.html, Accessed: 20/02/20
Juneau. T., (2016), Iran’s policy towards the Houthis in Yemen: a limited return on a modest investment, International Affairs. 92 (3): pp 647–663
Magdy. S., (2019), Report: Death toll from Yemen’s war hit 100,000 since 2015, AP News, [online], Available at: https://apnews.com/b7f039269a394b7aa2b46430e3d9b6bc, Accessed: 20/02/20
Perlo-Freeman. S., (2019), Who is arming the Yemen war? An update, World Peace Foundation [online], Available at: https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2019/03/19/who-is-arming-the-yemen-war-an-update/, Accessed: 20/02/20
Posen. B.R., (1993), The security dilemma and ethnic conflict, Survival, 35(1), pp.27-47
Toft. M. D., (2010), Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory?” International Security 34(4): pp7-36.
UNHCR, (2019), Operation: Yemen, 2020 Planning Summary, Global Focus, [online], Available at: http://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/pdfsummaries/GA2020-Yemen-eng.pdf, Accessed: 20/02/20
Wintour. P., (2019), Yemen ceasefire: new UN resolution seeks to save agreement, The Guardian, [online], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/16/yemen-ceasefire-un-urgently-tries-to-preventcollapse-of-agreement, Accessed: 20/02/20
Zhukov. Y., (2016), Taking away the guns: Forcible disarmament and rebellion, Journal of Peace Research 53(2): pp242-258
[1] The security dilemma refers to the paradox of states trying to increase their own security causing chain-reactions that make them less so.
By Catherine Greenacre,The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
