Yemen: PA-X Matters

In a conflict with multiple factions, it takes but one gun yielding individual to incite violence. Peace agreements are hard to be drawn and must be secured for wide circulation to encourage every such person to adhere to a ceasefire.

In the PA-X database archive, we find an interesting instance of an inter-tribal social agreement written by hand, on a piece of official paper (the Tribal Brotherhood Agreement, 2022).* This particular social agreement has multiple signatories, along with their thumb prints. It could easily be crumpled up and thrown into a bin, lost forever. While this agreement is currently archived in the PA-X database and not included in the public release of PA-X Version 8, the existence of such an agreement in the database underscores the importance of documenting and preserving these types of efforts, which may have some connection to peacebuilding efforts.

Losing such agreements to the flames of war is exactly why PA-X matters. Recording and analysing such peacebuilding efforts is why PA-X or anyone using its resources helps to recognise the 4.5 million persons displaced in Yemen. PA-X acknowledges these agreements for Yemen’s future generations. PA-X matters.

Data from PeaceRep’s PA-X Tracker raises some interesting questions. Why are most conflicts in Yemen focused around its western and southern geographies? Is it because these are the trouble spots which promote violence or is it the case that these regions are specifically targeted for some reason? Find out the nature and degree of conflicts in Yemen through the UCDP/ACLED graphs in the Tracker. 

Either way, given that the conflicts have been going on for decades, has the international community helped resolve the conflicts or have some external interferences escalated the existing conflicts? On the PA-X Yemen timeline tracker, we can see that on multiple occasions sought reconfiguration of boundaries (Saudi Arabia) or mediate between warring parties (Qatar) in Yemen’s conflicting groups. What’s interesting is that these parties are not international organisations, but countries who take sides in the war by supplying resources to their “chosen one”. Do these interferences help resolve conflicts in Yemen? Or is Yemen a pawn in geopolitical one-upmanship?

Apart from the external interferences, have Yemen’s internal policies of providing amnesty to specific individuals from listed terrorist organisations helped achieve peace? We find specific instances of amnesty being granted to such individuals in Yemen. Are such instances the reason for entities to continue to threaten Yemen and the larger region?

These questions about the conflict in Yemen cannot necessarily be answered by the PA-X Tracker, but the availability of this data allows such questions to be raised. Similarly, the PA-X Database, now in Version 8, ensures that any peace agreement, amnesty or ceasefire is recorded so that future questions may be asked.

* Correction on 19 June 2024: The agreement, which was written on an officially headed piece of paper, references the Ministry of Justice and addresses social issues and tensions within communities. However, it could not clearly be connected to a local conflict. Therefore, based on PA-X definitions and inclusion criteria (see https://pax.peaceagreements.org/media/documents/about_pax_local_v8.pdf), the agreement was archived (rather than published) on the database. A previous version of this blogpost did not make this clear.

About the author:

Saketh Srinivas is currently pursuing his LLM in Law at The University of Edinburgh, and has previous experience in research on conflict related governance issues. He also worked with PeaceRep as a PA-X Peace Agreement Analysts ahead of the launch of Version 8 of the database.

Explore all PeaceRep Yemen research.