Eurasia Press & News
The UN is recruiting a new envoy to broker peace in Yemen. More important than who gets the job is how UN member states and the mediator perceive its purpose, interpretations of which have limited the UN to the flawed two-party framework adopted since 2015.
Martin Griffiths, the outgoing UN envoy to Yemen, gave his final briefing to the UN Security Council on 15 June, painting what he said was a “bleak picture” of stalled efforts to broker a ceasefire and initiate talks over ending the country’s six-year civil war. Elite Yemeni and diplomatic circles are now abuzz with speculation about who will replace Griffiths, whom the UN has named as its new top humanitarian official. Yet the better question is not who the envoy will be, but what job description the new person will have. The situation in Yemen has changed significantly since the war broke out, and it is time for mediation efforts to catch up.
In 2011, Ban Ki-moon, then secretary-general, dispatched the UN’s first representative, the veteran British-Moroccan mediator Jamal Benomar, to Yemen’s capital Sanaa with a broad remit to shape the UN’s response to popular street protests and regime infighting. Since then, the country has undergone a precipitous, heart-rending transformation. Having overseen an abortive political transition between 2012 and 2014, Benomar was succeeded by a Mauritanian UN official, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, in early 2015, shortly after the civil war erupted; he, in turn, was followed by Griffiths, a British diplomat and mediator, in 2018, a year and a half after the only major round of face-to-face Yemeni peace talks to date, led by the UN and held in Kuwait, collapsed.
” Yemen has fragmented into numerous zones of military and political control over the course of the war. “
Yemen has fragmented into numerous zones of military and political control over the course of the war. The Huthis, who control Yemen’s populous north west, are lined up against a wide array of local forces, from northern tribesmen and formerly allied military units to southern secessionists and Salafi militias, across several fronts. As these armed and political factions have proliferated, they have turned to regional actors for arms, money and political support, and have often devoted as much of their energy to fighting each other as the Huthis. The UN has not kept up with the pace of change, despite having ways to do so. The crux of the issue is the dominant interpretation of an April 2015 Security Council resolution. Resolution 2216 names the Huthis, who had seized Sanaa the previous September, along with the Saudi-backed government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi that they ousted, as the conflict’s two primary belligerents. In effect, it also demands that the Huthis and their allies surrender to Hadi, whom it affirms as Yemen’s legitimate president. Hadi, his backers in Riyadh and the Huthis argue that the resolution restricts the UN’s mandate to a two-party negotiation framework, which they all favour. The president and his allies further contend that the war can end only with their return to power in Sanaa, but few foreign officials seem to believe this goal is realistic.
The two sides’ interpretation of Resolution 2216 has spread among UN and diplomatic circles, and 2216 is increasingly viewed as a barrier to progress. Some politicians and commentators in the U.S. have called for it to be replaced outright, albeit without providing much detail as to what a new resolution would consist of. There may be no need for another text, however, as 2216 already provides the necessary flexibility: it calls for an “inclusive” and “consultative” process to resolve Yemen’s many political crises. The UN has yet to test more expansive interpretations of this language than the one prevailing at present. Ould Cheikh Ahmed and Griffiths each calculated that trying to change the UN approach, in particular by engaging more parties than just the Hadi-Riyadh axis and the Huthis, was more trouble than it was worth. Both envoys decided to stick to the two-party model rather than spend their time dealing with pushback from those it favours.
But this approach has not worked. Since early 2020, Griffiths has sought to broker a nationwide ceasefire between the Huthis and Hadi, an agreement upon humanitarian and economic confidence-building measures such as an end to restrictions on trade entering Hodeida port and the reopening of Sanaa International Airport, and a return to national-level political talks, with Riyadh given a de facto veto over negotiations. In early 2021, the incoming Biden administration threw its weight behind this initiative. In response, the Huthis and Hadi government have alternately quibbled with and excoriated the UN plan, taking turns, in Griffiths’ telling, to try blocking it. The Huthis, who have the military edge on the ground, calculate that they stand to gain by stalling; they have pushed for the deal to come into effect piecemeal, to their benefit. The government views compromise on Hodeida port and Sanaa airport – which the Huthis say must come before ceasefire negotiations can start – as the beginning of the end for its side. Because each party can shoot down UN proposals and because each sees the war increasingly in zero-sum terms, neither has a strong incentive to moderate its stance or even negotiate. Other powerful armed and political factions on the ground, meanwhile, have repeatedly declared that they will reject any settlement in which the UN has given them no say.
Some UN member states expect the next envoy to continue the current approach and make it work, but say they are open to a shakeup of a moribund process if and when an opportunity presents itself. But hanging on to a framework that has failed is wrong-headed, as is passively waiting for change to come. Instead, UN member states should see the changing of the guard as an opportunity to proactively push the new envoy to articulate a realistic vision for ending the conflict and create space for carrying it out. This view is not just Crisis Group’s. In his valedictory speech, Griffiths himself noted that Yemen needs an inclusive political process and a settlement that reflects the interests of local conflict parties and peace advocates alike.
” Crisis Group has long advocated for the UN to expand the talks beyond the two-party framework. “
Crisis Group has long advocated for the UN to expand the talks beyond the two-party framework. It should include militia leaders and politicians who can make a ceasefire stick, as well as organisations, particularly women-led groups, that have negotiated local truces and helped stabilise the areas where they live. The UN could add some of these groups to the main negotiations and/or establish a parallel track to provide them with a venue to inform an initial political settlement. Doing so would signal to the Huthis and Hadi that they can no longer approach negotiations as a winner-takes-all proposition. In order to achieve at least some of their aims in a multiparty process, the government and the Huthis would have to build alliances with other Yemeni groups, and hence make compromises. An expanded process, in other words, would encourage deal-making. It would also help prevent attempts by either of the two main parties to spoil negotiations or to ram through provisions detrimental to the other side, which would all but guarantee a return to conflict.
To make such a shift work, UN member states, the five permanent members of the Security Council in particular, would need to work in concert, as they did before the war broke out. Since 2015, international coordination has been spotty at best, leading to infrequent meetings at which diplomats discuss tactics far more than strategy. To be successful, the next envoy will need consistent international support in word but also, crucially, in deed. A good way forward would be for key countries, starting with the Security Council’s permanent five, to form a contact group that works with the envoy to ensure that issues like the economy, for example, or women and civil society’s inclusion in talks receive proper attention. The Council would need to assemble such a group while the new envoy engages in wide-ranging consultations with the Yemeni parties. It would then need to convene with the envoy to discuss a diplomatic course correction if the envoy had decided on a better approach. A statement from the contact group to that effect would help counter any resistance from any of the conflict parties.
Beyond overhauling the framework, the UN will also need to change its modus operandi in mediation. Ould Cheikh Ahmed and Griffiths spent much of their time travelling around the Middle East, making only brief stops in Sanaa and Aden. They did that in part because the Hadi government and its regional backers were reluctant to allow the UN free rein to meet whomever they pleased; and because the Huthis often refused to meet the UN envoy in Sanaa. Yet progress in Yemen is not made in formal meetings but through steady relationship building in the sitting rooms (majalis) of influential leaders. UN member states should press the new envoy to spend as much time in Yemen as possible, consulting widely among, and even mediating between, a range of groups. (Doing so may have the additional benefit of giving the envoy much-needed leverage with parties that have become accustomed to asserting control over the conflict narrative.)
” The envoy’s scarcest resources will be time and space. “
The envoy’s scarcest resources will be time and space. Whoever takes the job will need time to develop a new approach, but with the Huthis bearing down on Marib, the Hadi government’s last bastion in northern Yemen, the new UN representative could well need to expend much energy trying to prevent a battle for the governorate and its eponymous capital. The government, the Huthis and Riyadh, meanwhile, are likely to try to box the new envoy into continuing with the narrow two-party approach.
In sum, the next envoy will have to find new ways to mediate not just between Yemen’s rival parties, but within their ranks, before articulating a vision for peace that includes a much wider range of players than the current UN framework allows for. Just as important, key UN member states will need to give the envoy space and time to hone a new approach, and then get behind a more expansive vision for peace – and demonstrate the will to execute it working in harmony.
