The Association of Mothers of the Abducted and the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, with support from the DT Institute, have released a documented case study titled “Peace from Within: How the Community Consensus and Reconciliation Committee Transformed Conflicts into Bridges of Trust in Taiz.” The study highlights a pioneering experience in restorative justice and local peacebuilding in one of Yemen’s cities most affected by armed conflict.

The study focuses on the experience of the Community Reconciliation and Consensus Committee in Taiz, established in January 2025 under the SPARK project, as an alternative community-based mechanism that has contributed to containing local conflicts and filling the gap left by the absence of law enforcement institutions amid political fragmentation and the deterioration of the judicial and security systems since 2015.

According to the study, the committee adopted a multi-level approach combining community mediation, human rights documentation, transitional justice awareness, and coordination with local authorities and civil society organizations. This approach enabled the committee to restore public trust, particularly in rural areas suffering from compounded institutional weakness.

The study found that the committee documented 96 conflict cases from the start of its work until the end of October 2025. Of these, 70 cases were resolved through peaceful, consensual solutions, while 26 cases remain under follow-up, most of them related to the consequences of war, displacement, and disputes over land and property.

The study also documented qualitative interventions by the committee, including halting dangerous property disputes, resolving family and community conflicts, securing the release of a detained child through a lawful reconciliation process, and contributing to the humanitarian response to the August 2025 floods by assessing damage and coordinating interventions with relevant authorities.

Regarding looted homes, the study revealed that the committee—working in cooperation with the Association of Mothers of the Abducted and SAM—contributed to the recovery of seven homes and their lawful and humane handover to their owners out of 27 documented cases. Efforts continue to address the remaining cases through negotiation-based approaches.

Both organizations emphasized that this study provides practical evidence of the capacity of organized community initiatives to transform conflict into opportunities for dialogue, repair social cohesion, and promote restorative justice concepts away from violence and retaliation.

They further stressed that DT Institute’s funding of the SPARK project enabled the development of a scalable and replicable model that can be expanded to other Yemeni governorates, contributing to local peace processes, advancing transitional justice, and building trust between communities and state institutions from the grassroots level upward.