YEMEN WAR;

WOMEN IN PEACE
BUILDING
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Protesters in Yemen called on former President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign during the
height of the Arab Spring upheavals across the Middle East. After widespread protests,
Saleh decided to pass up power to his second-in-command, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi,
and a constitutional amendment would be drafted under his guidance at the National
Dialogue Conference (NDC), which started in March 2013. The months that followed
were marked by fighting and disagreement among Yemeni parties, and although the
conference was completed in 2014 with the signature of the NDC constitution, war
erupted anew in the following months. The purpose of this briefing paper is to examine
the role of women in peacebuilding from the beginning of the conflict to the present,
using empirical evidence.
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................................3
2.0 THE WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA IN YEMEN...............................................3
3.0 THE 2011-2015 NATIONAL DIALOGUE CONFERENCE IN YEMEN; WOMEN’S ROLE...5
4.0 WOMEN’S ROLE TRANSFORMATION IN MODERN YEMEN................................................6
5.0 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................................7

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1; Girls Chant slogans at a protest in front of the UN building in Sanaa Yemen (May 12
2016).

Figure 2; Women Peace Protest in Yemen

Figure 3; Yemeni Women on Peace Protest

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1.0 INTRODUCTION
Women's roles in Yemen have changed over time as the crisis has progressed. There are
certain people and organisations that succeed in a nation that continually struggles to
establish and promote women's rights (Domingues 2020; Mojahed et al., 2022; Neier 2020).
The purpose of this paper is to examine the shifting roles of women in Yemen and how
women's attitudes in peace-building situations have evolved from the period of the post-Arab
Spring peace discussions in the National Dialogue council to the role women play in today's
war.

Initially, women were allowed to participate in discussions and were represented by a

mandate as part of the governmental system (Cater & Howard 2020). Women in Yemen are
now struggling to find their voice since this representation is no longer available (Ahmed
2021). Women's place in society provides them with a unique set of chances in fostering
peace in Yemen, where they are constantly marginalized and persecuted for attempting to
promote peace. Women shall be defined as peace-builders, human rights activists,
humanitarian workers, and anybody else who chooses to contribute in the promotion of
women and their involvement in bringing peace to Yemen in this article. The debate starts
with a general review of women's responsibilities in peace processes and conflict, before
moving on to the state level, where a comparison will be made between two distinct periods in
which women have worked to achieve peace.

2.0 THE WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA IN

YEMEN
The United Nations (UN) established the Women, Peace, and Security agenda in 2000, a
collection of eight Security Council resolutions that laid the groundwork for women's equitable
involvement and involvement in security and peace processes initiatives (True 2016; George
& Shepherd 2016; Miller, Pournik & Swaine 2014). The first UN Security Council resolution,
1325, enacted in 2000, was the first to acknowledge that men and women experience war
differently. This agenda encourages actors to address the fundamental causes and drivers of
conflict, including gender inequality. Another noteworthy decision is Security Council
Resolution 1889, which assures that women's safety and empowerment be included during
post-conflict negotiations (Shepherd 2011; Kreft 2017). As cited in Bjorkdahl & Mannergren
Selimovic (2015), this resolutions framework has served as the bedrock for women's
involvement in peace processes, although it has come under fire on both the international and
domestic levels. Prevention, involvement, protection, and eventually relief and rehabilitation
are the four pillars of the agenda (Asante 2020). Few things have been done in Yemen to
guarantee that women are involved in these debates and also that the three "pillars" of
prevention, participation, and protection are kept.

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Figure 1; Girls Chant slogans at a protest in front of the UN building in Sanaa Yemen (May 12
2016).
Source: https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/29584/to-end-yemen-s-war-bring-
women-back-in-to-the-peace-process

First and foremost, when discussing the Women, Peace and Security agenda within the
context of Yemen, it is significant in noting that Yemen has not devised a National Action Plan
for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325, and the broader Women, Peace
and Security agenda as a whole. According to Paffenholz et al., (2016), if Yemeni women are
to gain a position at the negotiating table, or to be involved in the peace processes in a post-
conflict scenario within Yemen, it is unlikely to occur without a National Action Plan for
women. Following the NDC in 2015 a group of women who were working on the negotiations
formulated a National Agenda for Women, Peace and Security, yet the plan never came to
fruition because of lack of support from women outside of the group (Grebe 2015).

Women's engagement in Yemeni peace efforts was seen from 2011 to 2015, but not so much
in the current war. Only two of the agenda's four "pillars" are visible in Yemen: participation
and prevention (Carvajal 2015). Women are permitted to participate in various levels of
government debates, including peace negotiations; however, the NDC's quotas are not being
followed, and a 30% mandate for women's participation has not been observed in any of the
peace talks or delegations since the NDC ended. The framework of the legislation in Yemen
provides a preventive precaution to guarantee women's peace and security. In actuality,
however, this pillar of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda in Yemen does not have
substantial public support or execution (Miller, Pournik & Swaine 2014).

Women's safety during war, as well as the recognition that women in Yemen experience
violence differently than males, are not addressed in Yemen. Yemeni women are often
threatened in public settings for participating in the war as peacemakers and mediators.
There have been relatively few conferences on Yemeni women in war since the agenda's
beginnings around the turn of the century, and the intensification of violence in Yemen in
2011 and again in 2015. Women convened in October 2015 in Cyprus to examine women's
participation in the conflict, and last year, with the assistance of UN Women, women gathered
in Amman, Jordan to explore women's responsibilities as peacebuilders in Yemen.

The fact that just two major conferences have focused on women's involvement in peace
discussions is problematic in and of itself, but it is also important noting that women's
responsibilities in peace processes were not considered in any capacity in 2016 or 2017. It's
also worth noting that there were probably comparable debates going on in Yemen about
women's participation in the peace process that weren't discussed on an international level.
This silence exemplifies the difficulties women continue to encounter in expressing their own

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concerns for Yemeni peace. Only one female delegate was present at the UN-sponsored
meetings that eventually led to the establishment of the Stockholm Accord in late 2018.

Figure 1;Women Peace Protest in Yemen

Source; https://www.bic-rhr.com/research/yemen-policy-report-5-yemeni-women-peace-
processes-2015-today

3.0 THE 2011-2015 NATIONAL DIALOGUE

CONFERENCE IN YEMEN; WOMEN’S ROLE
Following the Arab Spring of 2011, Yemen had a series of transitions and discussions aimed
at reconciling disparate factions and establishing a power-sharing arrangement following Ali
Abdallah Saleh's 33-year dictatorship (Carapico 2013;Thiel 2013). Each political party
involved at the table was obligated to include at least 30% women on each panel throughout
these discussions. Women's roles in peace processes gained a lot of traction as a result of
this mandate. These women were present in substantial numbers over the NDC's two years,
accounting for 28% of the conference's total attendees (Anderlini et al., 2017; Borsch-Supan
& Wilke 2006).

Three of the nine NDC workshops were conducted by women, and an all-female panel was
formed to allow women to express their concerns more forcefully to the council (Karman
2017; Eshaq & Al-Marani 2017). These figures show how crucial women were in the quest to
form a government after the 2011 revolution. They were an important element of the
demonstrations and discussions, but they had to deal with a lot of criticism and structural
issues along the road. Because many delegations and organisations in Yemen still do not
publicly push for women's involvement in official capacities, many of the hurdles that women
encounter in wanting to engage more in peace processes are structural in nature.

The revolutionary women sought to ensure that women had a minimum of 30%
representation in parliament (Karman 2017), although this aim has yet to be realized. In
reality, this aim may be farther away from being realized in 2022 than it was after the NDC in
2015. During the NDC in Yemen, women battled for representation, emphasizing the
significance they have in peace negotiations. The UN Special Envoy to Yemen lobbied for the
inclusion of women in the peace discussions in Yemen in 2015 at the United Nations (Murthy
2018; Al-Mowafak 2021), however little modifications were made to provide women additional
opportunity in the peace procedures throughout the international transition from 2011 to
2015.

Following the NDC's conclusion in 2014, women were appointed to a number of bodies,
including the Constitution Drafting Commission and the National Authority for Monitoring the

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National Dialogue Conference's Implementation, among others. However, since these
committees were needed to fill quotas with women, their existence was mostly apparent on
the surface.

4.0 WOMEN’S ROLE TRANSFORMATION IN MODERN

YEMEN
In the ongoing civil war today, women have been disproportionally affected by the conflict
(Sing et al., 2021;Young 2017). According to Ajeen (2019), the economic impact of the war
effects a variety of sectors and groups in Yemen, arguable, the group that is most affected by
the conflict is family households. Yemeni families can no longer depend on males to provide
for them, and the number of women who have assumed the role of head of home has climbed
to more than 30% throughout the conflict.

This transformation in women's responsibilities is crucial in light of the cultural stigmas that
prohibit women from participating more fully in public life. Women confront several risks as
they work to keep their families and communities afloat while also attempting to adapt to new
methods to deal with the conflict's repercussions. Women's hazards, such as physical and
verbal threat, harassment, and defamation (Aydin et al., 2009; Moore 2018; Ferrier & Garud-
Patkar 2018), must be recognized, especially since women encounter obstacles in public
settings in Yemen (Aydin et al., 2009; Moore 2018; Ferrier & Garud-Patkar 2018).

Figure 3; Yemeni Women on Peace Protest

Source; https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/empowering-women-yemens-
countryside-securing-ibb

Women's responsibilities have changed dramatically after the crisis started in 2015,
compared to their positions during the Arab Spring. Women have taken it upon themselves to
fight for the end of the war, as well as their representation in discussions and possible post-
conflict settlements, in today's conflict. Women have flocked to the streets, like they did in
2011, to demand a participation in the peace negotiations. However, since the violence is still
continuing, a similar post-conflict conversation, such as the NDC, that would enable women to
have an active part in peace efforts seems improbable at this time. When searching for

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chances for women to participate in peace processes, the political environment in Yemen, as
well as the parties' refusal to discuss or execute peace agreements, is difficult (UN 2012).

Over 100 Yemeni women convened in Jordan in March 2019 to examine the role that women
may play in official meetings, local organizations, and their involvement in Yemen's peace
talks (Lackner 2019; Domingues 2020). While UN Women's Special Envoy to Yemen, Martin
Griffiths, highlighted women's involvement in peace processes, the conference itself featured
no women speakers on the first day, and women were only permitted to speak after media
were barred from the talks (Buchhold, Harlander & Quamber 2018;Nevola & Shiban 2020).
Although conferences like this are critical for increasing conversation about women's rights,
their participation in the conflict, and possible pathways toward peace, inclusion is still absent
in these gatherings. Not only the issue, but women from all around Yemen should be at the
forefront of talks. Women in Yemen are involved in conflict resolution on a variety of levels,
advocating peace and providing security wherever it is available.

5.0 CONCLUSION
Women's responsibilities in previous peace efforts have remained unchanged in the present
war, despite the fact that women now hold a variety of roles in Yemen. Women have been
disproportionately impacted by the violence in Yemen. Women had an important role in
supporting peace on local, state, and international levels throughout the post-conflict era and
the NDC in 2011-2015. Women are seeking to take a more active role in conflict resolution as
peacekeepers, peace builders, and negotiators in 2019. However, they have mostly failed in
this endeavor, since women's involvement in peace processes is less common now than it
was in 2015. Yemeni women are trying to find a voice in the discussions since they are not
permitted to sit at the table. Women's participation in Yemen's peace processes is critical for
the country's stability and for fostering behaviors that might secure a durable peace. Women
must be integrated in Yemen's peace procedures, especially the execution of a National
Action Plan for Yemen. Based on this regard, the following recommendation was made;

 Yemeni women have a tremendous chance to showcase and promote peace, but their
safety and security must be prioritized.

 Despite the fact that Yemeni women are in the front-line of individual diplomacy
and peace-building, they lack a broad enough forum to advocate for themselves.

 Women's responsibilities in peace negotiations must be supported by the global system,

which must aid on both a global and regional scale to enable women from all around
Yemen to participate actively in negotiations.

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