1. Overview of the SPARK Program
Under the SPARK (Supporting Peace in Yemen through Accountability, Reconciliation, and Knowledge-Sharing) program, DT Institute and its local partners, the Abductees’ Mothers Association (AMA) and SAM for Rights and Liberties (“SAM”), launched raising awareness campaigns to complement restorative justice pilots and engage community members in Taiz and Aden.
The restorative justice pilots aim to foster reconciliation and resolve community-level public disputes that have caused human rights violations. While raising awareness campaigns educate community members on transitional justice mechanisms and engage experts and decision makers in thought provoking and effective dialogues and initiatives to advance Yemeni transitional justice.
This model was designed in response to the findings of The Path Towards Peace, a research study published by SPARK in April 2025. This study captured local understandings of transitional justice (TJ) across Yemen, revealing that 64.3 percent of community members prioritize reconciliation and war-ending efforts over retributive accountability. Participants identified clear roles for civil society, including initiating dialogue and reconciliation, raising TJ awareness, and documenting violations.
In addressing these gaps, SPARK works to advance local and national reconciliation, by furthering initiatives to educate local stakeholders on transitional justice concepts. At the same time, the program builds resilience within divided communities through the pilots, which create sustainable pathways for dialogue and conflict resolution.
Through effective engagement, the program activates all segments of society – from the community level to civil society, experts, and high-level governmental stakeholders. This enables these groups to not only be participants, but central drivers of Yemen’s transitional justice journey. With donor support, these efforts can be scaled to reach more communities, ensuring that reconciliation and peace take root from the ground up.
2. The Repeated Collapse of Reconciliation Efforts in Yemen
For over 50 years, Yemeni reconciliation efforts have repeatedly collapsed. The cycle has always followed the same framework, beginning with bloody conflict, temporarily ceasing with weak agreements, and restarting with renewed outbreaks of violence. The cessation of hostilities remains temporary, allowing this cycle of violence to repeatedly restart, because those bargaining for reconciliation continue to bargain in their own self-interest without regard for future sustainability. Their self-centered interests have prevented them from addressing the roots of conflict or to acknowledge its impacts upon the general population.
In total, this violent cycle is fueled by several core factors. These factors include elite bargaining and sabotage, the exertion of external interests, institutional and social fragmentation, the severe humanitarian crisis and violations of human rights, and the continued marginalization of Yemeni civil society, victims, and the population at large. Once political factions decide that they have momentarily exhausted their firepower, they return to dialogue only to sabotage the process, choosing to maintain their grips on power over honest reconciliation.
Similar to the pattern of elite bargaining, external interests, including regional and international conflicts and tensions, also sabotage peacebuilding efforts. As Yemen is caught up in the crosshairs of regional and international interests, peacebuilding stalls. Decades of Yemen’s continued conflict has deteriorated institutional services, leading to increased distrust of public systems, community fragmentation, and rising social tensions. Massive displacement, socio-economic difficulties, and localized conflict economies have furthered distrust and tensions. Moreover, institutional vacuums have allowed parallel socio-political structures and armed political forces to further thrive.
The conflict has also led to a severe humanitarian crisis, wherein human rights are not respected and serious violations are repeatedly committed against local populations. People continue to be repeatedly victimized as violations compound upon one another. Furthering this deterioration of the humanitarian fabric and human rights is the continued marginalization of victims, civil society, and the public at large. These groups are completely left out of peacebuilding endeavors and political dialogue, allowing the political elite to ignore their suffering and interests.
By failing to address the conflict’s negative impacts upon the population, the negotiations fail, allowing the bloody cycle to live on and continue. A recurring pattern in Yemen’s conflict dynamics: actors that initially derived legitimacy from representing victims of past injustices have, over time, become responsible for new grievances and violations. The Houthi (Ansar Allah) Movement drew support from unresolved harms associated with the Saada wars. Similarly, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) gained legitimacy from longstanding southern grievances linked to the aftermath of the 1994 conflict. Yet, as these de facto authorities have exercised power and control, both actors have themselves become associated with allegations of abuses, exclusion, and rights violations.
This illustrates how unresolved historical grievances can create cycles in which victims become political actors, and political actors risk generating new victims. Without effective accountability, redress, and reconciliation mechanisms, past grievances are not resolved but reproduced, creating successive layers of victimization that complicate peacebuilding and social cohesion.
Public buy-in is required for sustainable national reconciliation, especially in a country where the public has been so brutally victimized from all sides. The Yemeni people have experienced direct violations, including arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, gender-based and sexual violence, killings, landmine violations, and other crimes against their human rights. Direct violations have been compounded by indirect violations, including crimes committed against family members and communal violations, which have deteriorated Yemeni livelihoods and communities.
For these reasons, victim-led transitional justice is not just important, it is necessary. Victims and civil society must be empowered as accurate and able leaders to direct transitional justice efforts and represent their own interests in peace talks. Their violations must not only be acknowledged but reconciled with reparations, memory-keeping initiatives, and accountability efforts to ensure non-repetition and to avoid victims from taking justice into their own hands or turning to other parties for revenge.
💬 “Corruption is rampant – I dare them to try to make reforms and dry up the corruption. People are eating dirt, living in the desert without life’s minimum necessities, between the sun and heat and the cold and rain and floods, every day they’re dying of hunger, nothing to eat. And then you have people collecting their salaries in US dollars, living in palaces outside the country, in hotels, insane luxury – do you expect those extravagant people to undertake reforms that will make them live a normal life inside Yemen like the rest of Yemenis? Impossible, whether the war stops or not.” – A marginalized (Muhamamash) women from Marib, as quoted in The Path Towards Peace Study.
3. Initiative Spotlight: Peace Engineering in Yemen, a Transitional Justice Ambassadors Forum Publication
Under AMA’s Transitional Justice Ambassadors Forum (TJAF), a recent analytical paper was published entitled Peace Engineering in Yemen. The paper utilizes Yemen’s history and past experiences to develop a national model for sustainable reconciliation that overcomes repeated collapse and cycles of violence. In doing so, the paper conducts a critical review of historical reconciliation experiences and lessons for constructing a sustainable national reconciliation framework.
It identifies drivers of repeated conflict and collapse of reconciliation efforts, arguing that their heavy reliance on elite bargaining and neglect of the roots of the conflict has hindered sustainable peace. These structural drivers of conflict further include exclusionary political settlements, weak institutions, the war economy, and external interventions. The paper proposes a sustainable peace framework centered on transitional justice, institutional reform, inclusive governance, and nationally owned peacebuilding processes.
💬 “Peace Engineering in Yemen aims to transform the lessons learned from the country’s historical reconciliation efforts into actionable recommendations. This is achieved through a thorough analysis of the causes and consequences of the collapse of previous peace agreements, leading us to a fundamental conclusion: the necessity of implementing transitional justice to break the cycle of impunity and rebuild the state, provided that the foundation for peace is laid from within and by the Yemenis themselves.” – AMA
The paper’s methodology utilized a combination of primary and secondary data to build its research database. Primary field data operated as the backbone of the study and featured four in-depth focus group and discussion sessions featuring TJAF members. Within the sessions, researchers captured diverse perspectives on the historical anatomy of the conflict and lessons from global transitional justice experiences, as discussed as applicable to Yemen.
This process involved more than 60 participants, of which 40 percent were women. Participants included academics, legal experts, victims, and activists. They represented diverse and strategically significant geographic areas throughout Yemen and beyond Yemen, including Taiz and Marib. They were carefully selected to ensure diversity not only in gender and geographic location but also in political pluralism (by including those affiliated with various political parties) and professional diversity.
Secondary data collected for the publication included political, historical, and legal literature on Yemen, peacebuilding, and transitional justice. More specifically, this included core national reference documents, including past agreements in Yemeni history, and authoritative international reports, including United Nations (UN) reports and World Bank assessments of Yemen’s economy. It also utilized comparative transitional justice publications to draw further lessons from other countries’ experiences with transitional justice and peacebuilding. This included Rwanda, South Africa, and Chile; each of which possessed their own unique history with transitional justice processes.
Inputs collected from the research process were collected, analyzed, and integrated to trace the historical anatomy of Yemen’s peacebuilding endeavors and diagnose the problems that have continuously undermined peace settlements in Yemen, ultimately leading them to failure. The paper briefly discusses the grave impact of these realities, outlining the political, social, economic, and military consequences of their repeated failures.
Finally, it utilizes all the data collected and the analysis presented in the previous sections to propose a national model for sustainable reconciliation that avoids previous pitfalls. This plan includes actionable strategic and procedural recommendations directed towards national and international stakeholders, forming a comprehensive roadmap from Yemen’s dark history to future, sustainable peacebuilding.
Within the paper, the phrase “peace engineering” was coined to represent the analysis and result of treating Yemen’s conflict, not as a contingent political event, but as a complex, interconnected system wherein historical, political, economic, and social inputs interact to produce recurring violent outcomes. The result is identification of a systemic failure, which has resulted from structural flaws in the institutional and power-design architecture of the Yemeni state. In this sense, Yemen’s past failures and recurring conflicts are not separate but interconnected.
💬 “I believe that the most important message this paper conveys is that Yemen does not need to recycle old settlements but rather needs to rebuild the relationship between the state and society on the basis of justice and partnership.” – A participant at the webinar launching Peace Engineering in Yemen
4. Agreement and Impact
The paper was launched by the TJAF in a webinar, which garnered attendance from approximately 79 Yemeni experts, civil society actors, and practitioners. The webinar served as a platform for substantive validation of the paper’s findings. Speakers broadly affirmed the paper’s central argument that Yemen’s peace failure is rooted in structural and historical factors rather than procedural gaps in negotiation frameworks. Transitional justice was consistently highlighted as a foundational requirement for restoring legitimacy and breaking cycles of impunity.
Civil society participants strongly engaged with the paper’s critique of elite-centered peace processes, confirming that previous inclusion of civil society organizations was largely advisory and non-binding, which limited accountability and weakened implementation. They further reinforced the paper’s argument that the war economy has become self-sustaining and continues to incentivize fragmentation and conflict persistence.
💬 “The process of building Yemen’s peace model is still under development, and there is no ready-made model that can be relied upon. Civil society is supposed to be a partner in decision-making, not merely a consultative body.” – A participant at the webinar launching Peace Engineering in Yemen
Dr. Mohammed Al-Mekhlafi, former Yemeni Minister of Legal Affairs, described the paper as a strong and important contribution, emphasizing that any viable peace process must simultaneously address root causes and advance TJ, while also calling for wider awareness-raising and structured stakeholder engagement around these issues.
Speakers also emphasized the importance of building onto existing national frameworks, including the National Dialogue Conference outcomes and constitutional proposals, rather than initiating parallel or externally driven models. Across interventions, there was strong consensus on the need to shift toward community-embedded monitoring mechanisms, expand women’s and youth participation in decision-making roles, and strengthen the link between knowledge production and policy influence. The webinar reflected strong validation of the paper’s analytical framework and reinforced its policy relevance for advancing a structurally grounded, nationally owned peace process in Yemen.
💬 “The analytical paper, Peace Engineering [in Yemen], puts its finger on a real wound when it diagnosed that Yemeni reconciliations suffered from elitist compromises and the marginalization of the political and economic roots of the conflict.” – A participant at the webinar launching Peace Engineering in Yemen
💬 “The good thing about the paper is that it linked two main factors for the success of any reconciliation. The first factor is the state of the roots of the Yemeni crisis, and the second is achieving transitional justice. This is excellent.” – A participant at the webinar launching Peace Engineering in Yemen
5. Background on the Transitional Justice Ambassadors Forum
The TJAF was established by local partners under the SPARK program in October of 2025. Described as a “dream come true” and “an independent platform aimed at paving the way towards peace grounded in justice” by AMA Chairperson, Amat Al-Salam, the forum is national platform for victims, activists, and civil society actors.
The TJAF is formed of 230 members from 15 governorates in Yemen. Members include victims, activists, and civil society actors committed to advancing transitional justice throughout Yemen. Members represent diverse and often underrepresented areas, including Socotra, Mokha, Ibb, and Al-Dhale, reinforcing the Forum’s nationwide reach and inclusivity.
The Forum maintains a structure of three functional units: (1) Advocacy, (2) Victim and Survivor Support, and (3) Capacity-Building. It is guided by a leadership committee comprised of representatives from the Joint Victims Group, the Justice4Yemen Pact (J4YP) Coalition, and selected TJ trainees under SPARK. This structure continues to ensure victim-led leadership and strong civil society engagement.
Forum members pursue transitional justice through discussions, regular member meetings, and the implementation of webinars and awareness sessions. The forum is also responsible for the publication of awareness raising materials, including posters, reels, and analytical papers. This included the critical analytical publication, Peace Engineering in Yemen.
6. Scaling the Impact
“Yemen’s history teaches us a simple lesson: unresolved grievances do not fade away — they return in new forms,” explained Sahar Mohammed, DT Institute’s Program Assistant. “When victims are denied justice, recognition, and redress, their suffering becomes a source of future conflict and political mobilization. Transitional justice is therefore not an optional post-conflict exercise; it is essential to breaking cycles of victimization and violence. If Yemen and the region are to achieve lasting stability, addressing the legacy of past violations must be treated as a strategic priority, not a secondary concern.”
This initiative marks an initial step in many, working towards the needed and critical transitional justice and peacebuilding processes in Yemen – the only path forward for sustainable peace throughout the country. The paper has illuminated specific roles and avenues for all segments and groups involved in Yemeni society and conflicts, who will each play a role in this process. This includes specific, actionable recommendations for Yemeni conflict stakeholders and political actors, decision-makers in current and future state institutions, private sector actors, regional and international actors, civil society, the media, and Yemeni society at-large. By bringing together these diverse actors, the paper envisions a Yemeni peace process that is detailed, thoughtful, inclusive, and above all, unprecedented. This, it emphasizes, is the key in breaking Yemen’s seemingly never-ending cycles of violence and conflict and ushering the country into a new age of sustainable peace
