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 enforced disappearance, lived under bombardment, experienced bitter displacement, were ravaged by hunger and denied basic rights. These people are not looking for revenge, but for a genuine recognition of their pain, and guarantees that the tragedy will not be repeated. This is what was revealed by a recent field study titled “The Road towards Peace,” published in recent days by SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties and the Abductees’ Mothers Association, both members of the Justice4Yemen Pact Coalition, in partnership with the DT Institute, to monitor 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 different society parts targeted six Yemeni governorates. Those governorates were Sana'a, Aden, Taiz, Hodeidah, Marib, and Hadramawt. The sample included109 individual interviews, 13 interviews with experts, and 20 group discussion sessions. About 64.3% of victims and participants chose the option of reconciliation and war termination as a priority for the success of Transitional Justice, compared to 35.7% who support holding violators accountable before any settlement.

This finding reveals the state of exhaustion reached by Yemenis, as much as it appeals to the humanity that peacebuilding in Yemen cannot be carried out without exposing the truth, redressing the victims, and restoring their dignity as a condition for lasting peace in the country. According to the principles of transitional justice, sustainable reconciliation cannot be achieved without going through the stages of truth and accountability. 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 holding perpetrators accountable, and reparations are delivered. In 2011, according to the Article 21 of the agreement of the mechanism for the transitional process implementation in Yemen, and according to the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative, the goal of the National Dialogue Conference is "to achieve national reconciliation and transitional justice, and the necessary actions needed to ensure that violations of human rights and humanitarian law do not occur in the future". Thus, the Ministry of Legal Affairs submitted a Law of Transitional Justice and National Reconciliation, in its first form of 2012, but the heated discussions and differences between the components of the National Dialogue Conference on Transitional Justice led to an inclusive vision. The outcome of the 2013 Dialogue Conference document stipulated the establishment of a transitional justice committee. Later, the Ministry of Legal Affairs amended the Law on Transitional Justice and National Reconciliation draft in 2014, to accommodate the dialogue outcomes, including the compensation for the murdered and wounded persons, detainees and forcibly disappeared individuals, IDPs, looted funds and lands, demobilized and dismissed employees, affected persons by mines and explosives, and anyone who was violated in any period of time with damage still exists. All of which would have stood before the transitional justice committees asking for justice and reconciliation.
Suddenly, the Houthi group turned and closed the door to justice, opening the hell of violations, before the concept of transitional justice became widely understood by the Yemeni people.
Currently, talking about transitional justice, simplifying its meaning, and studying experiences in different countries, is a light that raises public awareness and paves the way for a new phase, starting with the recognition of victims' stolen rights. The term of transitional justice mechanisms refers to efforts that address the legacy of large-scale human rights violations where judicial and non-judicial structures cannot fully address, as defined by the United Nations. It explains that transitional justice covers "the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with the attempt by society to reconcile with a widespread legacy left by 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 reconciliation inclusion. Thus, it aims to constitute a basic solution that contributes to building the new phase and bringing about change for the better, through justice mechanisms that work to compensate victims of violations of the past/old stage, and prevent the recurrence of such violations in the future.
According to the Path to Peace study, conducted by Yemeni organizations, 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 is a reflection of 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 the violations they were subjected to, for various reasons, most notably were; fear of perpetrators and retaliations, or lack of financial resources to cover litigation costs, as well as fear of shame stigma, especially in the abuses to which women are subjected. The lack of legal awareness, especially with conflict-related violations, has contributed to the silence of victims, as well as a sense 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 is calling 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, about 30,000 people were disappeared, and forced more than a million and a half individuals to leave the country. Human rights organizations and activists have launched a large-scale mobilization campaign to encourage victims to demand their rights and expose violations. These efforts concluded with establishing  a national committee, which included jurists, representatives of the church and civil society organizations, to investigate crimes, identify those perpetrators, uncover the truth, and ensure that they do not recur.
Despite the different political and geographical contexts, the Yemeni and Argentine experiences show a striking intersection 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 long silence due to fear of punishment or reprisals, along with a widespread sense of accountability disappearance. However, the Argentine 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. Whereas Yemen, which is Facing complex challenges in the absence of political stability and the continuation of the conflict, can benefit from this experience by building civil and media alliances that lead awareness campaigns and lay the foundation for demands to restorative justice that builds peace and prevents the tragedy recurrence.

Past Fears: 
The aforementioned study touched on the positions of political components 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, with its wings, is inclined to reconciliation option, 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 permit 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, even made physically assaults the head of the transitional justice team. Whereas the Islah party, although they will be 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 most affected by the conflict at this stage. Yet, Yemeni Socialist Party is showing their enthusiasm for transitional justice track especially in addressing violations related to the southern issue. It is worthy noted 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.
But the current issue is posed by the period formed after 2014 due to War. In this regard, it is important to point out a part mentioned in the study, represented in the emergence  of components that were able to establish military forces, such as the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which stems from its vision of solutions by returning to the pre-1990 era, that is,  the separation of the south from the north, and thus clashing with the rest of the components, including the political components within the south itself.
These discrepancies reveal the lack of real consensus between the political components on the 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. So, 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 enters into a serious dialogue about fairness 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 discussions were from Sana'a governorate. One journalist, who is close to the group, confirmed this pessimistic view. He stressed in his participation that transitional justice, from his group's point of view, is conditional on all parties to abandon attachment/affiliation to foreign powers, stressing that the elements of justice, according to their vision, are based on "fair compensation for the victims", adding that they have a "national vision" that may be the most appropriate plan. In old days, Houthis had never been a part in 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 storming 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 considers to be third-rate morality and perhaps less?

This profound contradiction between Houthi ideology based on dynastic superiority with the principles of transitional justice based on equality, recognition, and fairness poses an exceptional challenge to any comprehensive political settlement in Yemen. In addition to these obstacles, another challenge is emerging that is related to not defeating the most prominent party accused of widespread abuses. Looking back at the experiences of Argentina and South Africa, one can 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 Hutu and Tutsi, with identity cards that gave Tutsis ethnic privilege 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. To take an example of the Rwandan, or Argentine case, as well as 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:

What the study "The Path Towards Peace" revealed the Yemenis' aspiration to end the war as an option for 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 based on the rule of law are revealed. 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 stage, the responsibility of political actors, civil society, and international partners is to spread public awareness of transitional justice, raise the voice of victims, and build a political determination that does not compromise human dignity, leading to the design of transitional justice mechanisms that do not excessively overdo, and justice is not subject to any accountability.

*This article was produced within the SPARK project, organized by SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties and the Association of Mothers of Abductees, with the support of the DT Institute.