اقرأ المحتوى باللغة العربية
Yemen’s parliament has come to resemble a retirement home. Elections for the legislature were last held 22 years ago on April 27, 2003. Since then, 60 Members of Parliament (MPs), or 20 percent, have died in office. The youngest sitting MP is now 47 years old, while many others have either lost their vitality and public presence to the passage of time or have passed away. More importantly, the body itself is inactive and unable to perform its constitutional duties.
Divided and Extended
The mandate of Yemen’s parliament should have officially expired in April 2009. Article 65 of the Yemeni Constitution stipulates that “the term of the House of Representatives is six solar years starting from its first session. The President shall call for elections at least sixty days before the term ends. If circumstances prevent this, the House shall remain in session and continue exercising its constitutional duties until elections are held.” However, parliament’s term was initially extended by two years under an agreement between the ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) and the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), the opposition at the time, following disputes over the electoral law and allegations of voter fraud.
The 2011 uprising against Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime further delayed elections and caused an initial fracture in the legislature. Most impacted by the uprising was the ruling GPC, as several MPs resigned from both the party and its parliamentary bloc. After 2012, the party further splintered between factions loyal to the new president, Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and former president Saleh, who still served as the GPC party leader.
Internal divisions within the parliament would only worsen with the war. Following the Houthi takeover of Sana’a in September 2014, some members within Saleh’s bloc followed his lead and backed the Houthi coup. The Houthis would later issue a “constitutional declaration” in February 2015, which dissolved parliament but was later retracted. As war broke out in March 2015, the parliament, like many state institutions during the war, split in two: one, based in Sana’a, included parliamentarians aligned with the Houthis and their ally, former president Saleh; and another with MPs aligned with the internationally recognized government, backed by the Saudi-led coalition.
The Sana’a-based parliament was the first to resume sessions in 2016, but some GPC MPs would defect and join the internationally recognized government side after the Houthis fell out with and killed Saleh in December 2017. This definitive rupture between the GPC bloc aligned with the Houthis in Sana’a and the faction that joined the government in Aden can be seen today. Meanwhile, MPs loyal to the government have faced politically motivated sanctions and charges from the Houthi-controlled parliament and judiciary in Sana’a. In 2021, the memberships of 39 MPs were revoked, adding to previous revocations, and 46 MPs were handed death sentences. The Houthi group also held by-elections in April 2019 to fill 24 vacant seats in areas under its control, which were decried as illegal by pro-government MPs. The body continues to meet in Sana’a, passing laws that bolster the repressive political environment on behalf of the Houthis, despite the lack of a lawful quorum. The remaining 96 elected MPs in Sana’a now find themselves essentially under a form of house arrest, unable to travel without the group’s permission.
The government-affiliated parliament, meanwhile, did not convene any formal sessions until April 2019, when it held a landmark meeting in Seyoun in Hadramawt governorate. There are conflicting reports on whether the parliamentary session reached a quorum. During this session, 141 MPs approved the state budget and elected a new speaker for the House of Representatives, Sultan al-Barakani. Pro-government politicians argued that this surpassed the legal quorum, as according to Article 72 of the Yemeni Constitution, the threshold would be 134 members (half plus one) after accounting for the 36 MPs who had died out of the original 301 members from 2003. The MPs did not convene again until April 2022, when they gathered for the swearing in of the Presidential Leadership Council to replace President Hadi.
Meanwhile, blocs on the government side have seen further fragmentation. The Yemeni Socialist Party split between its traditional leadership and the Southern Transitional Council (STC). The remnants of the GPC bloc further fractured among factions loyal to the internationally recognized government, supporters of Saleh’s son, Ahmed, and Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) member Tareq Saleh. Among these realignments, the Islah party’s bloc has arguably remained the most cohesive. However, its role and influence remain constrained by the body’s continued failure to convene. Islah Party MP Shawqi al-Qadhi has accused multiple actors of obstruction, saying there is a vested interest in preventing the legislature from fulfilling its constitutional mandate—particularly its oversight and accountability roles. Among those identified by Al-Qahdi were former President Hadi; the PLC, the STC (which effectively controls Aden and has previously blocked parliamentary sessions there), the parliamentary leadership itself, political party leaders, as well as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
An Absent Third Branch
Currently, of the 301 MPs elected in 2003, 132 support the government, 96 are located in Houthi-controlled areas, 60 have died, and 13 remain in a grey zone,[1] having left Houthi-held territories without formally aligning with the government. Most of them are businessmen or individuals with interests spanning both areas of control.
The current parliament remains Yemen’s last standing elected institution, alongside the local councils elected in September 2006. It retains formal legitimacy under Article 65 of the Yemeni Constitution, even 22 years after its election. However, its internal fragmentation and transformation into a battleground for competing political interests have rendered it incapable of exerting any meaningful influence on the national landscape. It is no longer able to fulfill its constitutional duties—either legislative or oversight-related—on either side of the divide. The absence of this third branch of government has left Yemen’s political structure unstable and unaccountable. This has helped enable corruption on the government side and repression on the Houthi side. Instead, MPs now voice their positions through personal statements and social media posts, without institutional support, specialized committees, or a functioning secretariat.
As a result, the will of the Yemeni population is neither represented nor reflected in the country’s legislative structures. The youngest Yemeni who exercised their constitutional right to vote in the last parliamentary elections would now be at least 40 years old. An entire generation of Yemeni youth—the demographic majority—has never experienced the act of electing parliamentary representatives, nor the political agency that comes with granting politicians trust and holding them accountable.
This analysis was produced as part of the Supporting Political Dialogue for Peace in Yemen program, implemented by the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies and CMI-Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation and funded by the European Union.