Members of the muhammasheen community remain among the most vulnerable victims of systemic injustice and suffering in Yemen, a situation made worse by the war. Ostracized and disparaged, the community’s women and girls (muhammashat) are particularly vulnerable. The nature of their work, which commonly entails begging, street-sweeping, and vending, brings them into public spaces, putting them at risk of exploitation,…

For decades, Yemen’s higher education system has been characterized by a persistent mismatch between graduates’ skills and the changing requirements of the market. The last labor force survey carried out in 2014 showed that less than one-third of Yemen’s labor force had secondary or tertiary education, and a qualification mismatch was found among some 83 percent of the employed population.…

A political crisis has wracked the interim capital of Aden as the internationally recognized government struggles to deal with the plummeting Yemeni rial. The currency now trades at over YR2,000 to the dollar, having lost over a third of its value since the year began. Riven by political infighting and lacking the vision or tools to arrest the slide, an…

This review was originally published in the British Yemeni Society Journal. Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War By Stacey Philbrick Yadav Available for purchase here. This book stands as one of the most significant contributions to understanding contemporary Yemen, offering a dense analysis of events from the 1990s to the present and a grounded examination of…

This review was originally published in the British Yemeni Society Journal. Tribes in Yemen: An Anthology Marieke Brandt (ed.) Ebook open access here. Tribes in Yemen: An Anthology, based on a workshop organized by Dr. Marieke Brandt in 2018, aims to rethink and update research on tribes and tribalism, reconnect the scholarly discourse with the present situation in Yemen, and…

Almost four years ago, the incoming Biden administration, deeming peace in Yemen as low-hanging fruit, declared the ending of its war to be a top priority and appointed Special Envoy Tim Lenderking, a veteran of the State Department and competent diplomat, to reap that fruit. At the start of the conflict, the US backed the Saudi-led coalition with arms, intelligence,…