To Make Yemen’s Peace Process Sustainable, Include Women

Peter Salisbury 

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It is easy to forget how quickly outsiders’ ideas about places like Yemen changed during the early days of the Arab Spring uprisings that began a decade ago—and how quickly those new impressions faded when the uprisings did not deliver rapid transformation.

Such short memories are proving costly for Yemeni women, who gained a place at the political table during and after the 2011 protest movement that ousted then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s autocratic regime, only to be shunted aside amid the violent conflict and international indifference that has plagued the country since. With a cease-fire deal reportedly in the offing in Yemen, international attention is currently focused on the men who have turned the country’s six-year civil war into the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Yet to create the best chance for real, sustainable peace in Yemen, negotiators must heed women’s calls to be brought back into the political process.