Challenges facing dialogues in conflict-affected settings: The case of Yemen - Salma Ahmed
Challenges facing dialogues in conflict-affected settings: The case of Yemen - Salma Ahmed
With the Arab region ravaged by wars, economic deterioration and conflicts of various natures, it is evident that political engagement to resolve or align views on crucial societal and economic issues has failed. It is important for (conflict-affected) countries in the region to re-establish the political, social and economic discourse in a more inclusive and comprehensive manner to create better living conditions for its growing population and this can be realized through productive expert and popular dialogues. The case of Yemen can show us how challenging it can be to lead a dialogue in a fragmented country and how dialogues can make or break peace.
For the past ten years Yemen has been witnessing an unprecedented conflict in its duration and impact on political life, public institutions, social cohesion and livelihoods. With the country fragmented into several control areas by the internationally recognized government (IRG), the de facto authority of Ansarullah (DFA), the Southern Transitional Council (STC) and other factions, the engagement in dialogues among all the war actors and other national, regional and international stakeholders is crucial to align views and bring about peace. Yemen has been witnessing several public and private dialogues on various issues such as on peace requirements, economic truce or post-conflict recovery. It is worth noting that Yemen' current conflict followed a wide and inclusive UN-sponsored National Dialogue Conference (NDC) that took place between March 2013 and January 2014, which outcomes were not agreed on unanimously and thereby triggered a conflict that is still to be resolved until our present day.
Leading dialogues can be challenging in peace settings and are even more challenging in a conflict-affected setting for prerequisites of dialogue such as infrastructure, inclusivity, participation and adoption. can be immensely compromised. One of Yemen's greatest challenges in dialogues at the moment is having the proper infrastructure for dialogues with almost all Yemen-related dialogues taking place at the moment are facilitated by UN and international agencies or regional and international stakeholders, with the exception of the The Yemen International Forum (YIF) that is led by the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, albeit being funded by European stakeholders. It is crucial to allow and empower Yemeni-led institutions to design and implement socio economic dialogues on the national and subnational levels for their comparative advantage in terms of knowledge, accessibility and coverage. This, of course, might be difficult to attain in the case of political dialogues among war parties due to the need to have neutral actors as the facilitators of peace talks or prisoner exchange talks.
This brings us to the challenge of inclusivity in designing and implementing dialogue. A great example of the impact of failing in fulfilling this criterion when facilitating national dialogues is the failure or the NDC in 2014 to be inclusive enough, even though it could be labeled as the most inclusive dialogue in the country's history, as it systematically excluded groups calling for the inclusion of the Tehami, Maribi and Hadrami causes, which are currently major battle ground among the various faction whether for political, economic or identitarian reasons. In more recent dialogues, we have seen facilitators paying more attention and giving more effort in establishing inclusivity in dialogue as we see a better and stronger private sector and civil society engagement in socio economic dialogues.
Yet having an inclusive design and implementation of socio economic dialogues is not a guarantee of truly inclusive participation for several reasons. Facilitating agencies are sometimes faced with the challenge of accessing the "right" participants. This is more prevalent in women or youth participation, where you sometimes find participation without the expertise1. Accessibility can also be compromised from the participants' side as we see more and more people being targeted for their participation in dialogues that also host representatives from opposing parties. The DFA recent crackdown on civil society organizations working in their control-areas has tremendously affected CSOs ability to participate not only in regional or international fora but also in dialogue outside the country. Such acts reduce the chances of having a meaningful and productive dialogue with certain sectoral and regional representatives, especially covering a large share of the population, not being able to present their insights and needs for them to be taken into account in shaping the outcomes of any given dialogue.n Putting obstacles in the way of participation in dialogue shows authorities lack of interest in their success.
If all criteria of socio economic dialogue design and implementation have been fulfilled, there remains one last crucial challenge to the success of a dialogue in delivering tangible results, which is adoption of outcomes. Socioeconomic dialogues, as opposed to political dialogues that result in peace agreements, result in outcomes and policy recommendations that inform policy design and execution. These policy recommendations need strong unified authorities or state institutions to implement them and ripe the intended results from them. In a conflict-affected setting that might be one of the biggest challenges around socio economic dialogues, especially when it's a civil conflict in a fragmented country like Yemen. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia led a socioeconomic dialogue on recovery in Yemen with an inclusive expert participation and in cooperation with the Yemen Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation to later be disrupted by the STC's reservations of its outcomes. This showed the great divide within the IRG and the lack of consensus among government representatives on recovery prerequisites, which compromised the adaptability of the recovery vision presented to them. Adoptability of dialogue outcomes lies on two columns, one is the feasibility of implementation of outcomes and the other is the willingness of authorities to implement those outcomes. This requires a stronger cooperation between dialogue facilitators and policymakers in a manner that does not compromise the dialogue's integrity.
As we navigate a landscape full of challenges in the Arab region it is important to learn from the different experiences in the region. The case of Yemen and various dialogues it went through is a living repository of lessons to be learned and failures to be avoided in facilitating socio economic dialogue in a volatile setting.
Salma Ahmed
