NEWS
ARTICLE: Consensus at the Heart of Transitional Justice in Yemen
Why Consensus-Based Dialogue is Essential for Lasting Peace in Yemen
The global debate on inclusive peacebuilding and consensus-based transitional justice processes focuses on how societies emerging from conflict can balance peace, justice, political stability, and legitimacy. Supporters argue that broad inclusion of victims, civil society, women, minorities, and local actors creates more sustainable and legitimate outcomes, while critics warn that overly inclusive or consensus-driven processes can slow negotiations, empower spoilers, and weaken accountability. The debate also questions whether transitional justice should prioritize universal legal accountability and reconciliation or adapt to political realities and locally negotiated approaches that may manage disagreement rather than produce full national consensus.
Under the Supporting Peace in Yemen through Accountability, Reconciliation, and Knowledge-Sharing (SPARK) project, our Yemeni civil society partners operate on the basis that active understanding, support, and participation of local populations is essential to any transitional justice process. True justice and meaningful, sustainable peace are only possible if those defining these processes are the same as those who were most impacted by this decade-long conflict. Their contributions and engagement in transitional justice are required to carry out critical processes and aspects, such as truth commissions, reparations mechanisms, and trials. Victim and local participation are similarly required for truth-seeking and memory-keeping, as factual histories of abuse cannot be recorded without their input and consent.
Furthermore, community buy-in provides legitimacy, transforming justice processes from being externally imposed to being locally owned. This decreases the risk of the process and its outcomes being ignored or rejected by the public at large. Buy-in also ensures that mechanisms aimed at addressing societal traumas and needs actually do so.
Popular engagement further empowers citizens and victims, turning them into functional stakeholders, rather than passive, ancillary subjects of the process. With victims and survivors as stakeholders in democratic processes that prioritize their voices, processes can be structured to ensure that the conditions that led to violence in the first place are disrupted, ensuring non-repetition.
Yemen’s history is marred by repeated violent cycles of abuse and trauma, shaped by political discussions and “peacebuilding” made at the expense of victims and locals. A pattern characterized by a disregard of victims' and survivors’ voices, resulting in their complete exclusion from the decision-makers’ table.
Moreover, thoughtful consensus between decision-makers remained limited and fragmented. Instead, individual political parties and forces were able to manipulate peacebuilding discussions to ensure continued impunity by avoiding accountability and acting in cahoots to maintain their grip on power. Ultimately, this self-serving agenda not only harmed victims and the public but also prevented the political cooperation among all active political players necessary to rebuild Yemen’s governance.
SPARK Partners interviewed for the study "Peace Engineering in Yemen":
Previous approaches to peacebuilding in Yemen suffered from fundamental flaws: reliance on elite bargaining, centered on power- and resource-sharing among conflict parties and tribal and political leaders, alongside the systematic marginalization of the political, economic, and social roots of the conflict. This approach formed a fragile peace that temporarily served elite interests while leaving the drivers of war dormant beneath the surface.
The solution to all of this is well known and as noted previously and within Peace Engineering in Yemen, it is an essential building block of any transitional justice process anywhere in the world: active engagement and participation of not only locals and victims, but all players – political, governmental, de-facto, international, and civil society, among any others – working towards shared understandings and agreements.
Pointing to the statistic that 60 percent of armed conflicts recurred between 1946 and 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) holds intercultural dialogue as “a necessary complement to legal accountability, not an optional add-on.” They hold that dialogue is required for “survivor-centered, transformative approaches that connect judicial and non-judicial mechanisms with lived experience, cultural practice, and plural memories of violence and its aftermath.”
Within the same publication entitled, Dialogue for Transitional Justice, UNESCO further notes that dialogue strengthens the four pillars of transitional justice – truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence – when it is participatory and anchored in lived experiences. This is true precisely because consensus-oriented dialogue helps create shared ownership of justice processes among political actors, victims, and local communities. In turn, this increases both implementation feasibility and long-term durability.
Yemen has certainly had its fair share of recurring conflict throughout its storied history. SPARK aims to ensure that future peacebuilding endeavors deliver lasting and sustainable peace, ending this cycle of violence and impunity. Therefore, a need for consensus-focused dialogue, aimed at reconciliation and bringing diverse perspectives towards common understandings, is necessary.
Overcoming Polarization: Restorative Justice for Political Consensus
SPARK works to implement consensus-based dialogues among diverse groups via three primary methods. Firstly, by bringing together diverse, and often opposing, parties to reconcile their viewpoints and find shared narratives, fostering real-time understanding and bringing forward such shared understandings in future transitional justice processes. Secondly, by reconciling disputing parties who have maintained deeply embedded and longstanding distaste for one another, fuelling greater community unrest and disputes. Thirdly and finally, by fostering understanding and awareness of different swaths of society, for example, victims and survivors, by consolidating their perspectives into cohesive narratives to inform future reconciliation and consensus-based dialogues.
A critical component of SPARK’s consensus-based dialogue methodology is the Community Reconciliation and Consensus Committee (CRCC), which serves as both a mediation mechanism and a bridge between communities, local authorities, civil society actors, and other stakeholders. Composed of respected community leaders, influencers, and trusted local figures, the CRCC helps build confidence among disputing parties, facilitates culturally appropriate mediation processes, and promotes community ownership of reconciliation efforts.
Under SPARK’s Political Parties Initiative, SPARK partners are working to build a joint political narrative on transitional justice and to find common entry points to integrate this narrative into future political discussions, trajectories, and peacebuilding efforts. In doing so, this initiative brings together diverse political actors in robust dialogue sessions, empowering them to build a joint transitional justice narrative together. Such political actors include not only traditional political parties, but also others who maintain strong influences throughout Yemen, including de-facto authorities and emerging political forces.
As a key output, the initiative also seeks to produce a practical guide, which will outline the shared visions, narrative, and perspectives of the political parties and forces. This guide will lay the foundation for unified political discourse on transitional justice. Not only will this guide ensure that transitional justice is included on the political agenda as a critical component of peacebuilding among such decisionmakers, but it will also ensure that political parties and forces can start this discussion by building upon common understanding and shared visions for transitional justice, rather than on opposing sides. This will foster further reconciliation and consensus among parties, ensuring that the cycle of consensus-building continues, replacing past cycles of misunderstanding and self-serving, opportunist foci.
Thus far, the initiative has brought together seven political parties and five political forces in four structured dialogue sessions conducted both in-person and online. Political parties included the Yemeni Socialist Party, Islah Party, the Union of Popular Forces, the Justice and Construction Party, the General People’s Congress, the Nasserist Unionist People’s Organization, and Al Rashad Party. Political forces represented included the Hadramout National Council, Hadramout Inclusive Conference, the Supreme Council of Popular Resistance, the Political Bureau, and the Supreme Council of the Revolutionary Movement.
The sessions were held in April and May in the Taiz and Hadramout governorates, as well as online. The sessions were successful in fostering healthy discussion amongst the parties and forces, in which participants examined different political perspectives. Through the dialogue, several points of both convergence and divergence emerged on critical transitional justice topics, including victims’ rights, accountability, truth-seeking, and reconciliation. Key sensitivities related to terminology and the sequencing of peace and justice were also exposed.
Dialogue sessions demonstrated broad consensus among the participants regarding the importance of transitional justice as a foundation for peacebuilding and addressing conflict-related violations, while reflecting different political dynamics and approaches. In Taiz, discussions were more polarized, particularly regarding accountability and reconciliation. The Yemeni Congregation for Reform, Yemeni Socialist Party, and Nasserist Unionist People’s Organization emphasized accountability and institutional reform, whereas the General People’s Congress and the Political Bureau prioritized reconciliation and political compromise. This reflects the continued politicization of transitional justice within a highly contested political environment.
In contrast, the sessions in Hadramout provided a forum in which representatives of different political parties openly discussed divergent positions on accountability, reconciliation, victims' rights, and institutional reform. While disagreements persisted, participants identified several shared concerns, including the need to address conflict-related violations and the importance of a future transitional justice process. Here, participants more frequently emphasized phased implementation measures, such as prioritizing truth-seeking and victim recognition before addressing more contentious accountability questions, suggesting greater openness to incremental consensus-building. Despite disagreements regarding accountability mechanisms, participants from different political parties generally agreed that victims should be recognized as central stakeholders in any future transitional justice process and that conflict-related violations required some form of formal acknowledgment and documentation.
Participants who initially framed transitional justice primarily through partisan political lenses gradually engaged with alternative perspectives presented by other parties, resulting in more substantive discussions on common challenges and potential areas of cooperation.
The initiative demonstrated a positive impact on fostering political openness toward transitional justice and cross-group engagement among participating political actors, with pre- and post-surveys showing a strengthened readiness for dialogue, cooperation, and inclusive political engagement.
The cross-party dialogue promoted by this initiative is not only significant in bridging gaps and creating understandings between differing parties, but also it is significant in and of itself. Yemen maintains an extremely fragmented political environment. The initiative therefore contributes not only to transitional justice awareness, but also to the development of shared political understandings necessary for future reconciliation efforts.
Resolving Community Disputes Through Restorative Justice
Under the Al-Shamayatayn Restorative Justice Pilot, SPARK partners addressed longstanding tensions between diverse community members and societal segments, which have spiralled into greater community disputes, inhibiting locals’ conditions and ability to live in harmony. The main goal was to resolve deeply seeded tensions between the Muhamasheen (“the marginalized ones”) community and local security forces in the Al-Shamayatayn district. In doing so, this pilot demonstrated how localized dialogue and restorative justice mechanisms can generate practical consensus even in highly polarized settings where formal judicial processes have stalled.
The hostilities originated approximately five years prior to the start of the pilot when a Muhamasheen man was killed by the local security forces. His body remained unburied throughout these five years, against Yemeni religious and cultural norms. This deepened community trauma and distaste, fostering distrust and resentment amongst the Muhamasheen community and the local security forces.
To resolve the conflict, the SPARK Community and Consensus Committee (CRCC) engaged the victim’s family and local security actors. Through discussions with each of these parties, the CRCC worked to understand each of their perspectives. Discussions with local security forces included the Director of Al-Shamayatayn District and involved extensive outreach utilizing the CRCC’s local networks. Engagement with the victim’s family required use of the trauma-informed care (TIC) protocol and listening to their demands.
Finally, the CRCC engaged both parties jointly in four facilitated dialogue sessions. Over the course of these discussions, both parties were guided toward understanding, compromise, and resolution. After five years of stalemate and judicial inaction, both parties signed a formal reconciliation agreement, resulting in a peaceful resolution based on joint understanding of each side.
On July 29, 2025, the victim was finally laid to rest with a dignified funeral. Moreover, the security forces publicly acknowledged the harm caused and agreed to reparative measures directed towards the victim’s family. Parties viewed the pilot as an opportunity to rebuild societal trust and understanding and to move forward. They expressed that the pilot was much needed, especially after so many years of ill-feelings and standstill.
Abdal Azzaz Al-Shaibani, Director General of Al-Shamayatayn District.
Initially, the victim’s tribe approached the situation with the intent of retaliation rather than resolution. However, through the initiative’s inclusive engagement with all stakeholders and sustained communication with the various parties, a shared conviction gradually emerged around the value of the reconciliation pathway.
Why Consensus Requires Listening to Victims & Survivors First
Under the Transitional Justice from the Survivor’s Perspective Initiative, SPARK partners fostered understanding of Yemeni victims and survivors who had experienced past abuse and human rights violations. As victims and survivors of such abuses, these individuals demonstrated a critical need to be included in transitional justice processes, including in reparations, truth-seeking, and recovery pathway initiatives.
The initiative had a dual aim and impact. It enabled survivors and victims to gain proper knowledge of transitional justice, their rights, and the potential recovery pathways utilizing Trauma-Informed Care (TIC). It also ensured that once this understanding was formed, a domino effect was created where they informed others about survivors’ needs and their collective memory around the human rights abuses they suffered. In this sense, the initiative provided a foundation for future consensus-based dialogue that takes into account these victims and survivors’ perspectives, memories, and needs.
The initiative in Taiz was attended by 50 participants in total. Here, participants indicated that the session was a key driver in encouraging them to document evidence of their human rights violation cases and to seek justice. Moreover, their experiences, needs, and perspectives were recorded to inform a future booklet summarizing their joint narrative.
A third session was held for 20 journalists, including several affiliated with political parties. This session explored the role of the media in transitional justice and peacebuilding. Throughout the session, speakers highlighted how media coverage can support accountability by preserving a historical memory and documenting violations.
From these sessions, SPARK partners published a booklet titled “The Voice of Survivors: Stories of Victims in Taiz.”. The booklet focuses on five moving testimonies, capturing how the war has reshaped ordinary lives and impacted Yemeni locals and victims. It discusses displacement, injury, loss, and disappeared loved ones with no answers. It emphasizes these experiences by contextualizing them within Yemen’s dire environment, highlighting how these experiences are not isolated incidents, but part of a broader pattern of violations that continue to impact individuals and communities long after the initial harm.
Building National Unity Through Bottom-Up Consensus
The above sampling of SPARK activities, including awareness-raising initiatives and restorative justice pilots, represents a small number of those contributing to consensus-based dialogue for transitional justice in Yemen. To enable national consensus-based dialogue, SPARK operates to foster understanding, unity, and reconciliation among all segments of Yemeni society, not limited to those above.
This includes female human rights defenders and influential religious preachers through the Peace Dialogue Restorative Justice Pilot; sectarian groups, including locals divided amongst sectarian lines, in the Al-Sarari Restorative Justice Pilot; and tribal leaders, local civil society, and international NGOs in an initiative enhancing social and political agreement through traditional and customary practices in transitional justice processes, from which a report was generated: “The Role of Tribal Customs in Promoting Transitional Justice in Yemen”.
In fostering such understandings amongst local, national, and international stakeholders, SPARK operates through a bottom-up approach under the methodology that these often-localized consensus-based dialogues are the foundation for building national, whole-of-society consensus down the line. As described at the outset of this case study, such dialogue is critical to the successful, lasting implementation of transitional justice and peacebuilding efforts throughout Yemen.
The fostering of broad agreement amongst all transitional justice stakeholders and an accurate representation of their perspectives in Yemen’s peacebuilding outcomes will enable it to represent a participatory, collective judgement of Yemeni society as a whole. This, in turn, will enable stakeholder buy-in, joint ownership, and empowerment within the transitional justice process, reducing risks of rejection and enabling further sustainability.
Najla Fadhel, Member, Abductees’ Mothers Association.
Women have been engaged in envisioning the process of transitional justice. It was smart from the project administration to include political leadership and the National Commission for Reconciliation. When we included them, we started to see a positive impact. It almost became a trend, and we saw how this influenced the political elite as well. Because of this, transitional justice became a subject that is discussed with the presence of marginalized female victims, side by side with the political elite. Some years ago, we could never witness something like this. I also noticed that ordinary people and emerging activists started discussing transitional justice. Another point is that we started a dialogue between authorities and victims, as in the Al-Shamayatayn Initiative.
Feras Hamdouni, Senior Program Manager, DT Institute.
The experiences of both Yemen and Syria demonstrate the limitations of peace processes that prioritize elite negotiations while marginalizing local communities and victims. in both contexts’ emerging consensus-based dialogue initiatives suggest a potential alternative approach: one that combines community-level reconciliation with national political engagement, the evolving transitional justice discussions increasingly recognize that sustainable peace requires both top-down political agreements and bottom-up social consensus.