Taiz city and the wider governorate have been an active frontline in the Yemeni conflict for more than two and a half years. Fighters from the Houthi movement and allied forces of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh first stormed Taiz in early 2015, with local resistance groups soon taking up arms against them. Fighting has raged since, with the anti-Houthi…

Summary: Through October Yemen’s domestic currency, the rial (YR), lost almost 10 percent of its value relative to the United States dollar (USD) in market trading, dropping from YR 375 to the USD to YR 412. This drop was roughly equivalent to the loss in value over the previous six months and the second time in 2017 that the rial…

The ongoing war in Yemen has spurred the world’s largest food security emergency and the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded. Millions have been sent into abject poverty, the nation’s economy has been destroyed, and basic public services have evaporated. At least 50,000 civilians have been killed or wounded during the conflict, with the belligerent parties committing a litany of war…

The disparity between the official exchange rate and the market exchange rate of the Yemeni rial that developed during the current conflict led to large-scale profiteering through currency arbitrage. In particular, Yemeni banks exchanging foreign funds for international humanitarian organizations reaped significant profits at the expense of the intended aid recipients in Yemen.

ince the administration of United States President George W. Bush, Washington has provided military assistance to the Yemeni government under the stated goal of bolstering the Yemeni Armed Forces’ capacity to combat Yemen’s local branch of al-Qaeda. This assistance was fairly consistently provided up until the outbreak of the most recent conflict in 2015, irrespective of the domestic upheaval taking place in Yemen.

International financial intervention is urgently needed to protect the value of the Yemen’s domestic currency. If this support is not forthcoming in the immediate near-term the Yemeni rial faces rapid depreciation; in a country that imports nearly 90 percent of its nutritional needs this depreciation would decimate the ability of most Yemenis to purchase food and other basic necessities. The two-year-old civil war and regional military intervention in Yemen has already helped create the world’s largest food security emergency, with…