Articles

Yemen DC Conference Communique

Realizing the responsibility for Yemen’s suffering and tragic war that is entering its eighth year, which has left more than half a million dead,  wounded, or disabled; and in light of the military and political stalemate, and the limited international community’s role to opening an airport or seaport while there are about four million displaced people dependent on humanitarian aid and twenty million living below the poverty line in a widely destructed country, and in light of the Houthi intransigence and refusal to renew the truce and showing signs of going back to fighting; and with the deviation of the Arab Coalition’s mission to creating militias and building cantons and turning faction leaders into state leaders, we meet here in Washington D.C. in this conference co-hosted by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Georgetown University, Tawakkol Karman Foundation, and the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), with the presence of the US envoy to Yemen, Timothy Lenderking.

We, the participants of this conference titled "Towards Sustainable Peace and Democracy in Yemen", which was held at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. on January 9th 2023, express our appreciation for holding this meeting, which allowed an open and free discussion of the political and humanitarian situation in Yemen. We express our deep thanks to those who organized and participated in this conference and showed their solidarity with the Yemeni people who have been suffering from extremely bad conditions for nearly eight years.

We, the participants, affirm that reaching true peace requires the fulfillment of the following commitments by the local parties involved in this war and by regional actors, including the Arab Coalition, and the international community:

• We, the participants in the conference, stress adherence to the unity of Yemen and the republican system without abandoning sovereignty or abandoning a federal, civil and democratic state, as confirmed in the outputs of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC). We value the efforts of the international community in support of this right as stipulated in the resolutions of the UN Security Council.
• We stress the urgent need to convene a Yemeni national conference that includes all Yemeni factions to produce a new Yemeni leadership that expresses the interests of the Yemeni people in consistent with the spirit of the Yemeni constitution and with a comprehensive national consensus to lead the next chapter of a peace process, and to have a federal, civil, and democratic state that is governed by law and establishes human rights., justice and equality as the basis of the state. We call on the international community to support this endeavor, because the way the current leadership was formed took the peace efforts undertaken by the UN and US envoys to a near dead end.
• We, the participants in this conference, call on the Houthis to comply with the aspirations and hopes of the Yemenis for a comprehensive and sustainable peace based on the foundations that were set out in the draft of a federal state that fulfils the interests of all Yemenis from Al-Mahra to Sa’ada and guarantees equal partnership for all Yemenis in power and wealth. Houthi’s approval to stop the war and engage in serious negotiations is the shortest way to get the country out of the state of fighting and war to peace, and block any attempts to tear and fragment Yemen by any party.
• We affirm that disarming all militias and placing all forces within the Ministries of Defense and Interior is the best roadmap to get out of this fragmentation that is hindering peace.

• It is important that the state only has the exclusive right to own weapons. No political, sectarian, regional or tribal party has the right to continue to possess weapons to threaten the survival of the state and strike its entity and the bases of its existence.
• Any future political settlement in Yemen must be based on what was agreed upon in the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) that produced the draft constitution for a federal state before it was undermined by the coup and war. The political process should include all Yemenis without exception because departing from the NDC document means returning to the causes of wars that tore Yemen apart for decades.
• To have a clear path for transitional justice is one of the ways to eliminate the causes of war reproduction and the factors of disintegration that have eroded the Yemen for decades.
• We stress the need for the call for an international conference for Yemen reconstruction, and two work on peace and reconstruction at the same time, because peace has urgent economic requirements that will lift Yemenis out of hunger and poverty and rebuild what was destroyed by the war.

• We stress the priority of releasing all abductees and prisoners, and compensating and rehabilitating them by all sides, and closing down all prisons and detention centers.
• We also demand the lifting of all kinds of siege on the Republic of Yemen, both internally between the cities imposed by the Houthis and externally imposed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, including lifting the ban on exporting gas and oil derivatives.
• We stress the need for all foreign forces to leave Yemen and to hand over ports, islands and military bases to the Yemenis.

At the end of the conference, we salute the struggles of Yemeni women, youth, students and all other Yemeni groups for their keenness and effective contributions to get out of the destructive war to a comprehensive peace. We appreciate their steadfastness and patience for the hardships they have endured as a result of the war and its bitter consequences.

Washington D.C., January 9^th, 2023