The Sana’a Center Editorial

Through most of 2021, the armed Houthi movement appeared unstoppable. As their forces pushed relentlessly toward Marib city, the fall of the last government stronghold in the north began to seem inevitable. Rich in oil and gas, its loss would be a mortal blow to the spiraling economy and political legitimacy of the internationally recognized government. Along frontlines across the…

For more than seven years international efforts to end the war in Yemen have focused on engaging the same local and regional stakeholders in a similar way and hoping they will act differently. This myopic approach has produced only failure and behooves a change in approach, one that engages parties with potential to influence the conflict who are outside the…

Many of the challenges facing humanitarian operations in conflict zones today are well known. Any package of assistance must survive the politics of individual donor countries before it even starts the journey down the pipeline to the United Nations and other aid agencies. From there, it navigates a maze of bureaucracy between headquarters and destination countries, often running the gauntlet…

Yemenis have become well acquainted with death and the many faces of injustice during these past seven years of war, but the Houthi movement’s September 18 public execution of eight men and a teenager staked claim to a new level of horror. With it, the Houthis sent a clear and unambiguous message to ordinary Yemenis of their intent to cement…

The internationally recognized Yemeni government’s recent decision to dramatically increase customs tariffs on non-essential goods appears to be spurring price surges for imports across the board. Given that the primary driver of the country’s dire food security crisis is price volatility, and that the government’s recent tariff hikes threaten to exacerbate this humanitarian crisis, the government should reverse its decision…

Saudi Arabia has recently begun a campaign to purge its government-run institutions of Yemenis, many of whom have held their jobs in the kingdom for decades. The implications of this policy appear likely to cascade through the Saudi labor market and could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in the kingdom and millions of their family members back in…

Through periods of tolerance and persecution, marginalization has remained a constant in the treatment of racial and religious minorities in Yemeni society. During the ongoing conflict, however, violence and subjugation against these marginalized groups has increased dramatically, to the point that it is fundamentally reshaping Yemeni society. For Yemen as we know it to continue to exist it needs to…

Despite all the talk of regional proxy wars in Yemen, after more than six years of conflict the same two primary obstacles to peace remain: the armed Houthi movement and Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, president of the country’s internationally recognized government. The former, led by paranoid zealots, operates like an ideologically driven mafia in the areas it controls in the…

International stakeholders to the Yemen conflict have pursued a rush of diplomatic initiatives in recent months that are unprecedented in the war to date. Consensus among regional and international actors to achieve a cease-fire appears closer now than ever before – with the right efforts made to gain buy-in, this could help create a framework for talks among Yemeni parties…

Each successive United States president over the past two decades has escalated America’s military involvement in Yemen in pursuit of ends in which Yemen itself was, at most, a secondary concern. In doing so, the US, and in particular the office of the president, has helped foster the situation Yemen faces today — splintered as a nation and facing one…