Funding: Centre de Crise et de Soutien (CDCS – French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs)
Yemen has been going through an unprecedented crisis for nearly a decade. Despite a national process that should have led to new governance for the country, the civil war that broke out was prolonged by an international intervention that turned the country into a battleground between regional powers.
Yemen, in its diversity, possesses a rich civil society and intelligentsia that have demonstrated their strengths and their capacity for debate and compromise. Promediation, informed of the realities by a group of academic researchers, was approached to discreetly bring together figures from this civil society, originating from all regions of the country. The choice focused on individuals still living in Yemen, as their place in the debate and their voices are often less heard than those of experts living outside the country.
A first meeting, in France, at Royaumont, contributed to a rich and insightful debate, allowing about twenty Yemenis, from the north and south, to reflect collectively, to diagnose the causes of the crisis, and to formulate proposals for potential solutions to end the civil war. This work subsequently continued, both in Yemen, during missions to Aden, Mukalla, and Sana’a, and outside the country, notably in Cairo. Promediation thus offered these actors, constrained by the war, a secure space for exchange, helping to maintain links damaged by years of war.