Articles

Sarah Leah Whitson

Given that the country is in a state of war and has been in a state of war for over eight years. After eight years of this war, this needless war, this senseless war, bombardment, and an ongoing blockade of the country that I must say, has been aided and abetted by my own government, people seem content to let the issue of Yemen and peace and democracy in Yemen to be solved in backdoors by foreign states and their appointed delegates purporting to represent Yemenis and purporting to govern Yemenis. 

Our goal was to bring this discussion to Washington, where so much of what our policymakers decide impacts the lives of Yemeni men, women and children. Unfortunately, they do not have a vote. And they do not have a say in what our policymakers here in Washington decide. But our goal is, at least, to center the voices of Yemeni leaders and activists, so many of whom you will hear from today, who have committed a good part of their lives to democracy and rights in Yemen. We have with us, as I mentioned Tawakkol Karman, who really, it took her a minute to agree to partner with us in organizing this conference and has provided incredible resources and backing to have it together. 

It has been a tremendous amount of work, as you can imagine, for an organization, the size of Dawn democracy for the Arab world now, which as some of you know, was founded by the late our beloved friend Jamal Khashoggi. And I should note that the chairman of our board, Nihad Awad, there he is. Thank you, Nihad for coming, and for your foresight and vision and helping create this organization. But we are a tiny team. And Abdullah Alawda, our gulf director, really deserves heroic congratulations for the months and months of work he has put into organizing this event and the tremendous amount of patience and grace that really only he, I think, could have carried out and carried forward to make this happen. 

Of course, all the teams have done, as well as the Tawakkol Karman Foundation and Georgetown University, worked together to bring you here today. Our speakers have prepared papers that we will publish and publicize as we continue our efforts to further discussion and debate about a Yemeni-led process to address the catastrophe in the country. When I first started working on Yemen, well, before the uprising, well, before the revolution, it was because of Yemeni activists who came to my office in New York Human Rights Watch at the time, and said you have to work on Yemen, Human Rights Watch needs to work on Yemen. And we did, we started working on Yemen, we opened an office in Yemen. And we were excited to see the revolution in Yemen, a peaceful revolution, a remarkable revolution that ousted a dictator, who had ruthlessly governed the country for many decades. 

It is a remarkable achievement today, still, for which Tawakkol has gotten obviously, great recognition. But all of the Yemeni people deserve support and recognition for what they managed to do, at tremendous risk to their lives to their survival, to create a new future for the country. And I think it speaks to the depths of Yemeni civil society, across the country, that they were able to come together to pull off this revolution peacefully, to establish a national dialogue process to establish the direction that they wanted their country to go in. Unfortunately, that process was upended with this war with the interference of foreign states, whose argument with Yemen has really little to do with Yemen and more to do with regional competition, regional control, regional influence. These are not the priorities of the Yemeni people, nor should they be ours. I hope that you will really take advantage of this opportunity to hear from the Yemeni speakers we have today, as well as experts, academics, journalists, who have worked to disclose and discover the abuses happening in their country, but most importantly, now working to ensure that the future direction of the country is centered on the rights of the Yemeni people, the freedom of the Yemeni people and the right that the Yemeni people have to democratic governance of their country. With that, I will introduce Professor Adely, who's a professor of anthropology and our partner here at Georgetown University. She chairs the Arabs Studies Center at Georgetown University. 

Professor Fida Adely

Good morning! On behalf of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and the Tawakkol Karman Foundation and the Democracy for the Arab World Now, DAWN, I would like to welcome our guests and participants to this important event. We have a distinguished lineup of speakers today, including Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Sarah Leah Whitson, who you've just heard from, Executive Director of Dawn; Abdulaziz Guberi, Vice President of the Yemeni Parliament; Khaled Al-Yamani, former Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs and UN ambassador; and Salah AlJabwani, former Yemeni Minister of Transportation; as well as many other distinguished speakers that we will have the privilege of hearing from today. 

It is unfortunate that it is a political and humanitarian crisis that brings us here today, and we must begin by acknowledging the weight of this. After more than eight years of war, Yemen has experienced widespread destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the war has caused the deaths of nearly a quarter of a million people, including many civilians, among them 1000s of children. The UN and Human Rights Watch have also recently reported on the killing and abuse of migrants and asylum seekers by parties to the conflict. While many of these deaths have been the result of direct violence, others are indirect and a product of a man-made humanitarian crisis created by the parties to the conflict. This crisis has been significantly exacerbated by an ongoing naval blockade imposed on Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition. In July of this year, the World Food Programme estimated that almost one in three Yemenis, 19 million people were food insecure, with 3.5 million acutely malnutritioned. 

Human Rights workers on the ground as Sarah has just attested to, on the ground in Yemen as well as abroad as well as the UN and international human rights organizations, have worked diligently throughout this period to document the tremendous human rights violations and repeated violations of international law that this conflict has witnessed, including the deliberate targeting of civilians committed by all parties to the conflict. In April 2022, to a limited true saw a reduction in the intensity of fighting in most parts of the country and small gains in humanitarian assistance, though the blockade remains. While the truce is fragile, and there have been repeated violations of the truce, overall civilian deaths have decreased and some space for movement and goods and people have opened up. While a continuation of the truce is possible, the potential for a return to full hostilities remains and the ongoing violations means that ravages of war continued to be felt, including significant human rights violations such as imprisonment, torture, and attacks on journalists. What recent conflicts have made abundantly clear to all of us is that these wars and their effects are not contained locally, nor are they produced locally. 

Sitting here in Washington DC. It also behooves us to acknowledge that the United States has also been party to this conflict, and has significant leverage over many of the key actors engaged. As such, it has a moral responsibility to actively work towards its end. Today's conference brings together Yemeni leaders and scholars, journalists and human rights activists from Yemen and beyond to think productively about a way forward. The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies was asked to host this event and reflects a type of engagement with knowledge producers, policymakers and activists in the Arab world that we are committed to. One that centers the expertise and experiences of those most directly impacted by the conflict, as well as researchers who center their experiences. It is our hope that today's deliberations can help lay a foundation upon which a brighter future for Yemen can be built. Thank you very much and welcome again to Georgetown University. And I will now pass along the microphone to Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace laureate.

Tawakkol Karman

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you, dear friends and colleagues participating in the Washington Conference "Towards Sustainable Peace and Democracy in Yemen"

Allow me to welcome you all, and all protocols observed.

I would like to thank Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and the Dawn Organization for partnering with us in organizing this important conference.

We meet here today to raise our voices for peace and democracy in Yemen and to express the suffering of our people who are entering their ninth year of the coup and the devastating war being waged against them internally and externally.

We meet today to raise our voices in an appeal to the world to save the Yemenis who have been living without a state for eight years, and who suffer from a daily threat to their lives in extremely bad conditions, where the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, thrown millions of lives into the displacement, and pushed Yemen to famine, embodying the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

The entire Yemeni people suffer from the coup and the war together live daily humiliation from the Iranian-backed Houthi militia that turned against the state and committed crimes against humanity and lives daily terrorism from the war, and Saudi-Emirati tutelage and occupation that declared war on Yemen under the false pretext of restoring legitimate government, whereas it caused massive destruction, and added more militias to the already existing militias, and went far in fragmenting and tearing the country apart. This is the real agenda of the Saudi-Emirati coalition war in Yemen.

I regret to say that continuing the present approaches to the Yemeni file by the United Nations and the major powers makes peace unattainable. The error of the international approach to the Yemeni crisis is visible. Any observer of the efforts of the international community, the major countries, and the UN envoy during the years of war can come to a simple conclusion that the essence of these trends is in the direction of leaving Yemen entirely to the Houthi militia on the one hand, and the Saudi-Emirati coalition on the other.

The result is that the major powers, the United States and Britain in particular, have implicitly or explicitly supported the continuation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the war on Yemen, its destruction, the occupation of its land, and its fragmentation in that horrific way, and the continuation of the Iranian-backed Houthi coup at the same time. This is unacceptable and incomprehensible support for keeping the Yemeni people under the mill of war, coup, tutelage, death, siege, destruction, the collapse of services, suspension of salaries, the spread of famine, oppression, and humiliation under which Yemeni cities and their militia-ruled populations suffer, from Sana’a to Aden and most cities and population centers in cities and rural areas.

The war in Yemen must stop, and we must put an end to this absurdity, this tragedy, this bloody coup, this disastrous war, and the war criminals. But how will this war end? How will we build sustainable peace and democracy in Yemen?

It is important to define the concept of the end of the war, and what are the conditions when we say that the war is over in Yemen and that we have to start with the challenges of the next day.

Defining the concept of ending the war is very important so that those who tampered with and violated Yemen during the eight years of war do not surprise us with agreements dressed as peace and prepared by the conflicting external forces in Yemen and their proxies at home, through which they complete the achievement of their goals of the war, and legitimize the division of Yemen and the status of the militia states as a fait accompli l!!

The Iran-backed Houthi militia, which started the war and turned against the state, will not end the war except after imposing its control by force and imposing its complete dominance over the country's resources, wealth, and educational and judicial institutions. And subjecting society to its supremacist, RACEST ideology. Houthis is a movement that does not show any flexibility to accept a political settlement in which it is a component within the components and a political group that recognizes the state as a reference for all the forces of society.

For Saudi Arabia and UAE, war is over if it can reflect its management of the Yemeni war in agreements that bless its occupation and tutelage over Yemen where there is no state, let alone its interests in plundering Yemen's wealth and controlling Yemen's geostrategic position of great importance, they want to divid Yemen to achieve their goals divided and chaotic and in a state rupture and small internal strife.

All the closures we have reviewed do not end the war, rather they provide it with more fuel and prolong its tragedy.

The war does not end with deals between the internal warlords and the occupying and external tutelage countries.

What a closure to the war in Yemen, if it was torn apart into mini-states run by militias affiliated with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE?

What a closure to the war if we go to agreements that legitimize chaos and acknowledge the statelessness and the end of the republic and unity and the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference, the draft constitution, and the project of the federal state and regions?

These questions are neither a luxury nor an adherence to a war. We are the first to reject and warn against it.

Continuing the tutelage over Yemen is a continuous declaration of war.

Keeping the militias as mini-states within the state is a war, no sane person can deny that. Militia, after all, live to steal and kill.

We believe, that the war in Yemen will end with the restoration of the hijacked Yemeni decision in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Iran.

The war will end with the integrity of Yemen, not with its fragmentation, with the restoration of the state of the Republic of Yemen, which has complete sovereignty and authority over all Yemeni territory, from Sa’da to Al-Mahra, from Sana’a to Seiyun, from Socotra to Aden, and Bab al-Mandab, and every inch of Yemeni land

Any peace agreement mustn’t harm the unity of the Yemeni state or surrender its sovereignty. Likewise, any peace agreement should lead to the cessation of the warlords’ intervention, the disarmament of militias, an end to divisions and the multiplicity of de facto authorities, and an end to daily violence exercised against the civilians, clearing mines, releasing detainees, and lifting the internal and external siege, and ending all forms of Saudi and Emirati interference and tutelage.

 to building an inclusive Yemeni government in which all Yemenis participate, and which is responsible for withdrawing militia weapons, moving forward with a referendum on the draft constitution, and holding various elections based on the constitution, and to a transitional justice that will do justice to the victims and ensure non-recurrence.

Respecting Yemen as an independent, one, unified and sovereign state, compensating it for all damages, and rebuilding it.

This is the only path leading to sustainable peace and democracy in Yemen, otherwise, it is nothing but a prolongation of the war and an increase in people's suffering.

Finally, we realize how great our suffering is, and we realize that one of the most important reasons for its continuation is the lack of a national authority that considers the interests of the Yemenis its main concern. We realize that there is abandonment by some, and greed among others, but Yemen is used to making great surprises, we are confident about our people.  All we ask is to help us overcome these difficult circumstances, and with the will of our people and our faith in Yemen, we will turn the page of war and start a new history, which they see far away and we see soon.

I can almost hear that call from everywhere in Yemen: The Yemeni people are not broken, and Yemen is hard to swallow.....

Thank you very much....

Allow me here to introduce the American envoy to Yemen Mr Tim Lenderking, Thnak you first for being with us, and  we would like to hear your vision on how this war can end, and ways to establish sustainable peace and democracy in Yemen, welcome Mr. Tim, the floor is yours..

US Envoy Timothy Lenderking

Good morning. Sabah Alkhair. Alsaalam alaikum. It's a great pleasure to be with you this morning. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to so many of you here in the audience and those of you online. I'd like to thank the co-hosts for organizing this terrific event today: the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Democracy for the Arab World Now, and Tawakkol Karman Foundation. I especially look forward to hearing the conclusions of today's conference, particularly proposed solutions to end the war once and for all. And that can lead to the withdrawal of foreign forces from Yemen. I'm pleased to share the podium this morning with Sara Leah Whitson and Professor Hadley and Tawakkol Karman and others.

… unable to buy basic goods, feed their children, or access basic care. Only a comprehensive Yemeni-Yemeni political agreement and recovery process can begin to repair these institutions and rebuild Yemen's economy. Through consistent intensive engagement, the United States has helped mobilize a strong international and regional consensus around peace efforts under the auspices of the UN. And I sincerely hope that today's event will continue to inform that process. We continue to see proactive constructive efforts by the Sultanate of Oman, which has played a critical role in peace efforts. We also continue to see a commitment from Saudi Arabia to help end the war, and that helped enable an unprecedented period of calm in 2022. Because of these collective efforts and commitment from the region and the international community to bolster UN peace led efforts in Yemen, the United States believes that 2023--this year-- ladies and gentlemen, brings new opportunities to end the conflict once and for all. And we must take advantage of these to truly end this terrible conflict. Yemenis deserve a prosperous future, and we remain committed to supporting Yemeni efforts to shape a brighter future. 

While many observers seek to present easy solutions to the conflict in Yemen, the reality is that the situation is complex, and meaningful diplomatic solutions take time. As many of you know better than I do: the roots of the war stemmed from the disruption of Yemen's peaceful transition process in 2014. The tensions and challenges that process sought to resolve have only continued to fester over eight years of war. That includes fundamental questions like the status of Southern Yemen, which Yemenis can and should decide for themselves. The UN led six month truce from April to October 2022 and the period of relative calm that has continued even after the formal expiration of the truce provide a valuable opportunity. First cross border attacks have stopped, including zero coalition airstrikes since March 2022. Second, civilian casualties from the fighting have dropped dramatically, even as casualties from landmines and other remnants of war remain a major issue that must not be ignored or forgotten. Third, fuel is flowing more freely into Northern Yemen. And last, commercial flights are continuing from Sanaa airport. More than 40,000 Yemenis have been able to take advantage of these flights for family reunification, for medical care outside of Yemen. These flights have saved lives. I've just pointed the four benefits that have helped ease the suffering of Yemenis since March 2022. They're not enough, but they do represent a start. And for that reason, we urge the Yemeni parties to take advantage of this opportunity. Build on these benefits by starting political talks under UN auspices to resolve this conflict. 

The United States understands the party's focus on economic measures. We agree that the economic crisis across the country is a main driver of the humanitarian crisis. We agree that urgent efforts are needed to ease this economic crisis and stitch Yemen's institutions back together. But the reality is that this can only be accomplished as part of an inclusive Yemeni led political process. The Houthis have focused their latest demands on paying public sector salaries using Yemen's hydrocarbon revenues. These public sector salaries are a lifeline for many Yemenis. But it was the Houthis’ escalation of these demands, and only these demands that prevented a formal extension of the truce in October. A truce extension that would have expanded the benefits beyond public sector salaries. While at different times, many parties have exacerbated the economic crisis, more recently, multiple Houthi attacks against Yemeni ports and international shipping in recent months have grounded oil export revenues to a halt. This halt in oil export revenues has deprived millions of Yemenis of resources that were used to pay civil servants salaries and provide basic services. All this while other hydrocarbon exports have been paused for years. 

Dialogue is the only way to resolve this issue. There is no military solution to the Yemen conflict. And there is no benefit that can come from a return to military hostilities by any party. Only by sitting down with other Yemeni parties can Yemenis reach a solution to pay civilians salaries and start getting money in the hands of families across the country. The Yemen government has formed its own negotiating team. The Houthi so far have refused to sit down with them. We urge the Houthis to change this approach: choose peace. The world is watching their and the other party's actions and inaction. We know these kinds of political and economic discussions will be difficult, including for Yemenis in the southern governorates home to most of these hydrocarbon resources. But only by tackling these issues can there be hope to reach a durable resolution that stops the fighting and reverses the economic crisis in Yemen. To some, an inclusive political process between the Yemeni parties is a critical first step. But durable peace and recovery require much more. A peace process must incorporate Yemenis calls for justice and accountability, for human rights violations and abuses along with efforts to repair the deep divisions within Yemeni society. A recovery process will need to follow and Yemen will require a major recovery effort that is supported by the international community and carefully managed and coordinated with the peace process. This recovery process must lay the foundation for the kind of expanded economic cooperation between Yemen and the region that will enable sustainable growth and prosperity. All of these efforts must be inclusive and incorporate voices from across the country, including from women and marginalized groups. Although it will take time, a comprehensive peace and recovery process is essential for the people of Yemen, the youngest of whom have only known war. The United States remains committed to working closely with our partners in the region, the Yemeni people and beyond to support this process, and to support Yemenis as they determine a brighter future for their country. Thank you very much.