Written by:
Salman Al-Humaidi
After more than a decade of devastating war in Yemen, justice has become, not just a legal obligation, but a humanitarian imperative for hundreds of thousands of victims who have lost loved ones, suffered from enforced disappearances, lived under bombardment, experienced bitter displacement, been ravaged by hunger, and denied basic rights. These people are not looking for revenge, but for genuine recognition of their pain and for guarantees that these tragedies will not be repeated.
These victims’ perspectives were documented by the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties (“SAM”) and the Abductees’ Mothers Association (AMA), as part of the Justice for Yemen Pact (J4YP) Coalition, in their field study titled “The Path Towards Peace,” conducted to understand the local community's vision on the mechanisms for implementing transitional justice and national reconciliation as a necessary entry point to achieve peace in the country.
The aforementioned study was based on the intentional sampling method, and the selection of victims included various segments of society, targeting six Yemeni governorates. Those governorates were Sana'a, Aden, Taiz, Hodeidah, Marib, and Hadramawt. The sample contained information gathered from 109 individual interviews with community members, 13 interviews with experts, and 20 focus group discussions. About 64.3% of victims and participants chose reconciliation and ending the war as a priority for the success of Transitional Justice, compared to 35.7% who support holding violators accountable before any settlement.
This outcome reveals the state of exhaustion that Yemenis have reached, despite appeals to the conscience of the international community that peace in Yemen cannot be achieved without uncovering the truth, delivering justice to the victims, and restoring their dignity — essential conditions for lasting peace in the country are burdened with a legacy of violations still awaiting justice. According to the concept of transitional justice, there can be no talk of sustainable reconciliation without going through truth and accountability processes. Such was practiced by countries, such as South Africa in 1995 following the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which lasted for three years. They have gone through listening to the testimonies of thousands of victims of the apartheid regime and applied the principle of conditional pardon in exchange for confession to the crime.
Definition of transitional justice:
Transitional justice represents a legal and ethical framework to address violations, ensure accountability for perpetrators, and delivery of reparations. The concept was first introduced in 2011, as outlined in the Implementation Mechanism for the Transitional Process in Yemen, developed under the Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative. According to Article 21 of the Mechanism, the primary objective of the National Dialogue Conference was to achieve national reconciliation and transitional justice and to establish the necessary safeguards to prevent future violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
Following this, the Ministry of Legal Affairs submitted the first draft of the Transitional Justice and National Reconciliation Law in 2012. However, intense debates and disagreements among the components of the National Dialogue Conference regarding transitional justice led to the development of a unified vision. The 2013 Outcomes Document of the National Dialogue Conference stipulated the establishment of a Transitional Justice Committee. Subsequently, in 2014, the Ministry of Legal Affairs revised the draft law to incorporate the outcomes of the dialogue. These included provisions for compensating the families of those killed and injured, victims of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance, displaced and homeless individuals, restitution for looted funds and lands, redress for those arbitrarily dismissed from their jobs, and victims of landmines and explosive remnants of war. The revised draft also granted access to transitional justice mechanisms for anyone who had suffered rights violations at any time and whose harm remained unaddressed.
Yet, before the concept of transitional justice could take root in Yemen’s public consciousness and bring meaningful change, the Houthi group staged a coup, shutting the door to justice and opening the door to widespread violations.
Currently, talking about transitional justice, through easily-understandable means and studying transitional justice experiences in different countries, is a guiding light that raises public awareness and paves the way for a fresh start starting with the recognition of victims' stolen rights. The terms “transitional justice mechanisms” refer to efforts that address the legacy of large-scale human rights violations where judicial and non-judicial structures cannot fully address them. As defined by the United Nations, transitional justice covers "the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past conflict, repression, violations or abuses," with the aim of ensuring accountability, recognition and memorialization of victims, reparations and restoration of trust between citizens and state institutions, and inclusion in reconciliation. Thus, it aims to constitute a basic solution that contributes to building a new phase and bringing about change for the better, through justice mechanisms that work to compensate victims of past violations and prevent the recurrence of similar violations in the future.
According to The Path to Peace study, conducted by DT Institute with partnership with SAM for rights and liberties and Abductee’s Mother Association, only 51 % of respondents were familiar with the concept of transitional justice, while others had never heard of it.
The need for mobilization:
The issue of poor public awareness of the concept of transitional justice reflects a deeper lack of legal awareness among the general public. For more than a decade, Yemen has been plagued by a devastating conflict that has wiped out infrastructure, left thousands of victims, and caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. The study indicates that thousands of victims did not report violations they were subjected to for various reasons, most notably: fear of perpetrators and retaliation, lack of financial resources to cover litigation costs, and shame and social stigma, especially in cases of abuse in which women are the victims. The lack of legal awareness, especially of conflict-related violations, has contributed to the silence of victims and to a perception of lack of opportunities for accountability, either due to the presence of violators in a position of power or their connection to influential institutions in areas under the control of the various parties to the conflict.
This human rights reality in Yemen calls back to the experience of Argentina in the eighties, between 1976 and 1983, when the country witnessed a wave of repression and tyranny that killed 15,000 people, disappeared about 30,000 people, and forced over 1.5 million individuals to leave the country. Human rights organizations and activists launched a large-scale mobilization campaign to encourage victims to demand their rights and expose violations. These efforts concluded with the establishment of a national committee, which included jurists, representatives of the church, and civil society organizations, to investigate crimes, identify perpetrators, uncover the truth, and ensure that they do not recur.
Despite the different political and geographical contexts, the Yemeni and Argentinian experiences show striking similarities in the challenges that hinder the achievement of transitional justice, foremost among them: fear, lack of awareness, and the continued influence of perpetrators. In both cases, there was a long silence due to fear of punishment or reprisals along with a widespread sense of lack of accountability. However, the Argentinian experience has shown that human rights mobilization, documenting crimes, and building social trust can break the cycle of fear and force the state to act, even after years of repression. Yemen, which is facing complex challenges in the absence of political stability and due to continuation of the conflict, can benefit from Argentina’s experience by building civil and media alliances that lead awareness campaigns and lay the foundation for demands of restorative justice that builds peace and prevents reoccurrence of tragedies.
Past Fears:
The aforementioned study touched on the positions of political segments and various parties towards transitional justice, which require attention when building a flexible and effective model for transitional justice mechanisms in Yemen. For example, the General People's Congress Party (GPC), which is now divided into two factions — one aligned with the Houthis and the other with the internationally recognized government (IRG), has displayed an inclination towards reconciliation, but they fear the path of accountability, fearing that they will be held responsible for past violations. This takes us back to December 2013, when the transitional justice team of the National Dialogue Congress failed to adopt the final report due to the GPC representatives’ objection. The party disapproved articles related to the political isolation law, including an article proposing the elimination of immunity granted to the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his top members and assistants.
Despite the deletion of these disputed articles, the party's representatives continued to object, and even physically assaulted the head of the transitional justice team. In contrast, the Islah party – although historically less enthusiastic about transitional justice in some periods, especially in the post-1994 war period – is expected to support the accountability and reparations process after 2014 as they are one of the parties that has been most affected by the conflict at this stage. The Yemeni Socialist Party is showing their enthusiasm for transitional justice processes, especially in addressing violations related to the southern issue. It is worth noting that most of the problems related to previous violations of 2011 were agreed upon via mechanisms to be addressed within the transitional justice project approved at the National Dialogue Conference.
The current issue is posed by the period after 2014 due to the war. It is important to point out part of the study: the emergence of political components with military forces, such as the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which came about due to its belief that the solution is to return to the pre-1990 era, that is, to separate the south from the north. Thus, their view clashes with the rest of the political parties , including political components within the south itself.
These discrepancies reveal a lack of consensus between the political parties on principles of accountability and fairness, which threatens to turn the transitional justice process into a tool for political maneuvering instead of a means to address grievances. It requires all political parties to adopt a courageous approach that accepts the principle of truth and reconciliation, transcends the fears of the past, and to enter into a serious dialogue about fair mechanisms away from narrow political calculations.
The biggest disruptor/perpetrator/violator:
Interestingly, the most pessimistic participants about the possibility of Houthi involvement in transitional justice were from the Sana'a governorate. One journalist, who is close to the group, confirmed this pessimistic view. He stated that their participation in transitional justice, from the Houthi’s point of view, is conditional on all parties abandoning attachment and affiliation to foreign powers, stressing that elements of justice, according to their vision, are based on "fair compensation for the victims," and adding that they have a "national vision" that may be the most appropriate plan. In previous periods, the Houthis had never been a part of any real national consensus. In 2014, the National Dialogue Conference laid the basics for a comprehensive transitional justice project, but the Houthis aborted this project by coup and stormed international institutions. In fact, Yemenis realize that the ideological structure of the Houthi group fundamentally contradicts with the principles of transitional justice, as it is a group based on class and racial distinction. Yet, how can their leader who believes in his right to rule according to divine selection admit to committing abuses against victims he views as third class – if not lower – human beings?
This profound contradiction between Houthi ideology, based on dynastic superiority, with the principles of transitional justice, which are based on equality, recognition, and fairness, poses an exceptional challenge to any comprehensive political settlement in Yemen. In addition to these obstacles, a major challenge remains: the Houthis — the main party accused of committing widespread violations — have not been defeated, making accountability and transitional justice even more difficult to achieve.
Looking back at the experiences of Argentina and South Africa, one can also consider the case of Rwanda, which in 1994 witnessed a genocide carried out by Hutu extremists against the Tutsi minority, in which about 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days and thousands of women were subjected to sexual violence, amid widespread media incitement. Belgian colonialism had contributed to fueling the class struggle between Hutus and Tutsis with identity cards that gave Tutsis ethnic privileges at the expense of Hutus, who later considered themselves a "defeated people." During the massacres, these cards were used as a tool of ethnic cleansing. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) ended these massacres by taking control of the capital, which led to the flee of hundreds of thousands of Hutus for fear of retaliations. In 2002, Rwanda established the Gacaca courts as an alternative justice mechanism, to compensate for the deficit of the formal judicial system in a country torn by hatred and division. These courts have combined justice and reconciliation, hearing more than a million cases in ten years. Taking the examples from Rwanda, Argentina, and South Africa, one of the key factors facilitating the implementation of transitional justice is the defeat of the most prominent party involved in committing violations, which contributed to paving the way for victim recognition and transitional justice. In these contexts, defeat means not only military or political loss, but the collapse of oppressive thinking, until the moment comes when societies can begin to rebuild themselves on the foundations of justice.
Hence, any path of transitional justice in Yemen cannot succeed unless it seeks to dismantle the founding ideology of the Houthi group and destroy its authoritarian structure, in the sense of commitment to national belonging on the basis of equal citizenship, and the removal of privileges that grant one group superiority over others.
A flexible model:
The study, The Path Towards Peace, revealed the Yemenis' aspirations to end the war as a necessary first step toward reconciliation and the success of transitional justice, bearing in mind that reconciliation does not mean forgetting, but begins when the truth is revealed, violations are acknowledged, and institutions are based on the rule of. Given the Yemeni situation, transitional justice needs to design a flexible model, as the study confirms – a design capable of restoring trust between citizens and state institutions and transforming pain into an effective memory that contributes to creating a new future. At this critical juncture, political actors, civil society, and international partners share a vital responsibility: to promote public awareness of transitional justice, elevate the voices of victims, and foster a political will that upholds human dignity without compromise. This entails developing transitional justice mechanisms that safeguard rights and ensure that justice is not subordinated to political interests or expediency.
*This article was produced under the SPARK project, carried out by the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties and the Abductees’ Mothers Association, with support from DT Institute.