The Ninth Yemen Exchange An Intensive Online Course on Yemen

Via maps and other visual aids, this session will untangle complex political alliances, identify divisions, and outline major conflicts within Yemen. Analysts will give a synopsis of current frontlines, armed groups, local and regional actors, as well as other stakeholders, bringing unexplored roots of the war to light.

An analysis of real-time data which will help you visualize the hard numbers and soft targets affected by Yemen’s war.

Houthi ambitions and policy goals are famously opaque. By examining their governance mechanisms, organizational structure, and the public policy choices they have made thus far, this session sheds light on deeper political machinations.

Tribes have a highly complex history in Yemen, their relationship with the state has waxed and waned, at times strengthening tribal authority and influence, while other communities find themselves completely fractured as powerful relationships unravel. This session is essential to understanding life on the ground in Yemen.

A representative from the Islah party in Yemen will speak about the party's history, its positions during the conflict, and its current state.

This session will examine current and post-war challenges facing Yemen’s economy, as this war is in many ways an economic one, and introduce possible economic frameworks to rebuild a post-war Yemen.

Tensions between Salafi and Houthi groups are relatively new to Yemen, emerging in the 1980s and 1990s. This dynamic plays a huge role in the current conflict, and is essential to understanding the Houthi stronghold over northern Yemen.

As the conflict converges with climate destabilization, in a nation suffering from extreme water-scarcity, a conversation about water is essential. This session brings together three experts, who all share water as their research focus.

For a gulf nation, Yemen’s energy sector is quite young. This opens the door to conversations about sustainable and renewable energy as experts from the energy sector discuss realistic options for Yemen’s future.

In a deeper discussion of tribes and their role in Yemen, this session specifically focuses on conflict, and the ways that tribal resolutions can help or harm peacebuilding in Yemen.

A representative from the Southern Transitional Council in Yemen will speak about the party's history, its positions during the conflict, and its current state.

The “southern issue,” shorthand for the political and economic fallout from Yemen’s 1994 civil war, has weakened the social fabric that holds Yemen together. This panel will attempt to outline the history of this rift, the very real inequalities, and perceived injustices, which lead to calls for southern secession.

The war has heightened the restrictive nature of gender norms, seriously impacting women’s daily lives in Yemen. Yet, women’s daily practices, from caregiving to resolving conflict on community levels, have slowly but steadily impacted peacebuilding.

Conflict has created the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, but the collapsing economy is sustaining it. Reconstruction and recovery will demand public and private partnerships, with local voices raised to the ears of policymakers.

Dynamics are constantly shifting in Yemen and throughout the region. In a summary of research provided in real-time by a team of analysts throughout Yemen and the Middle East, Thomas Juneau and Sanam Vakil will spend this session providing an up-to-date synopsis of regional power shifts.

Rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran signaled the arrival of an unexpected new era in Middle Eastern diplomacy. To help contextualize this agreement, representatives from research centers in Saudi Arabia and Iran will speak together.

When the conflict began in 2015, the UAE took swift action in southern Yemen. This session will focus on the strategic objectives of the UAE’s outsized presence on the ground in Yemen, their interest in stability along the Arabian peninsula, and the UAE’s current strategy in Yemen.

This session will use visual aids to map the activities of non-state armed groups currently active in Yemen’s civil war, including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and ISIS, and their potential involvement in post-war Yemen. It will also cover foreign counterterrorism operations inside Yemen.

From peacekeeping to development and distribution of aid, this session details the UN’s intricate involvement in Yemen.

A representative of Saudi Arabia will speak about the Kingdom’s current involvement in Yemen, the history of their relationship and the way forward for the two neighbors.

This session will explore the international aid responses to the war in Yemen, with a particular focus on humanitarian initiatives and the FSO Safer.

Crude oil has the power to sink or float Yemen’s economy, but production is currently halted by security concerns, causing new layers of environmental damage.

Beekeeping and coffee production are ancient Yemeni practices still performed in the same ways today, in small batches, by hand, with expert attention. Just as the global market has begun to value the generational knowledge and unique natural environment that makes these delicacies irreplaceable, war threatens these ancient ways of life.

In April, 2023, over the course of three short days, nearly a thousand prisoners were exchanged among warring parties in Yemen. This exchange was the result of several rounds of negotiation, with different parties eventually striking a deal in Stockholm Sweden, 2018. No swap materialized for years following the agreement. This session discusses the complicated negotiations, and life in Yemen for families of prisoners of war.

Without encouragement, without funding, without visibility, Yemen’s art scene still holds on. Art has become an essential outlet for the struggles artists face daily, and so art manages to sustain itself in an otherwise unforgiving environment.

Yemen is full of buildings unlike anywhere in the world. Ancient high-rises defy imagination; built using sustainable materials, mud-brick, traced with white lime to reflect the sun, with bio-waterless plumbing and rooftop gardens, somehow modern skyscrapers built according to trendy ecological design principles are centuries old.

Jamila Ali Rajaa, vice-chairperson of the Consultation and Reconciliation Commission, will speak about the Commission’s work to support the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC).