The Roles of Youth and Women-led Civil Society in the Three Peace Tracks

About the Publication

The roles of local civil society organizations working in peacebuilding in Taiz Governorate and Yemen more broadly have been largely shaped by the humanitarian context, as these organizations have sought to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of local institutions. This has also been influenced by donors allocating the majority of their support to emergency humanitarian response. Despite these circumstances, local civil society organizations have sought to adapt their approaches and activities by increasingly focusing on and transitioning toward work across Yemen’s three peace tracks. Youth- and women-led civil society organizations have played active roles in peacebuilding, particularly across Tracks II and III. Their efforts have included activities related to prisoner exchanges, reopening access routes, restoring services, resolving community conflicts, and raising public awareness on peacebuilding. Through these substantive and tangible interventions at the community level, they have succeeded in gaining the trust of various parties, local communities, and donors. Several factors have supported the efforts of these organizations, most notably their approaches to implementation, the experience they have accumulated, the trust placed in their efforts by communities, donors, and conflict parties, as well as networking and joint action. At the same time, these organizations have faced numerous obstacles that have constrained their role across the peace tracks, particularly Tracks II and III. Key challenges include limited donor support and insufficient understanding of the nature of their work under the prevailing circumstances; weak organizational capacity for networking; institutional shortcomings; limited availability and experience of qualified peacebuilding personnel; security-related concerns; attempts to undermine or question their efforts; and accusations of bias, among other constraints that have limited their ability to fulfill their peacebuilding roles.