A Path to Justice for Yemen

Introduction

Justice is generally considered a standard of rightness, where unequal and unjust treatment lead to social and civil unrest. What does justice mean for foreign policy? What does justice oriented foreign policy look like for the United States relationship with Yemen, a nation facing a terrible humanitarian crisis? The US has been inconsistent in their foreign policy towards Yemen, foregoing justice to maintain economic and international status quo. The effects of unjust US foreign policy are visible in local governance in Yemen where rebel and terrorist groups are able to strengthen their hold on the local populations. Establishing justice oriented foreign policy would further US goals of counterterrorism in addition to achieving ethical practices and supporting Yemen’s sovereignty. This paper will explain the ethical framework of justice, explain expectations of justice in Yemen, actual applications of justice in Yemen’s judicial system, and the impacts of the United States on Yemen’s ability to practice justice. Explanations of Justice as the basis of which is social stability and dignity, justice preserves the right to fair treatment. It is instrumental to any society that a system for justice is not only accessible, but integral to each action. Applicable to the actions of individuals, to principles of law and politics, justice is often distinguished from the other ethical lenses as to how each person is to be treated, by other individuals and by systems. The enforceability of justice is key to running an ethical system of any kind; in governments, justice must be distributed to each party and individual, for institutions are responsible for ensuring that benefits and burdens are distributed justly and equitably. Individuals expect the institutions they live under to deliver some justice to ensure social, corrective, and retributive justice are carried out; in turn, individuals are expected to support these institutions by adhering to living justly. 

Justice is the ethical standpoint of giving to each person what they deserve, and is traditionally used as a standard for rightness, especially regarding treatment. Social stability and justice go hand in hand as the dignity of the people must be respected in order to appropriately address crimes and injustices; institutional justice preserves relationships between the citizens and the authorities. Of all the different avenues for justice, restorative and transformational justice attempt to restore relationships rather than seeking punitive action against a person or system that perpetrated a harm. This form of justice is more informal as it does not necessitate court proceedings but aims to establish reconciliation between victims and perpetrators.

Justice in times of social or political transition must address the historical parties and systems while taking cultural preferences into account. In Western democracies, justice is retributive, using legal means to “to establish truth, to educate the public about past abuses, to promote shared understanding, to rebuild the rule of law, to produce a societal consensus regarding the intolerability of the atrocities, to end human rights violations, to promote national conciliation, and to reestablish the dignity of the victims (Buckley-Zistel, 2000, p. 157).” This approach is highly individualistic, while it has achieved global relevance in the past 200 years, the top down institutional approach is difficult to complete for developing nations. For nations transitioning towards democratization, justice must address the legacy of authoritarianism and move from calling for political and civil rights to addressing structural injustices. Therefore nation building techniques must emphasize the importance of justice from the first.

The question of justice between institutions arises as international politics enters the sphere of justice. What are the responsibilities of institutions on individuals they affect but are not an authority over? If individuals under a government institution are treated unequally by a different institution, who is responsible for establishing corrective justice? A founding principle of justice is interdependence, yet how nations that interact with each other but do not depend on each other to address injustices?

Visions of Justice

Though it is commonly understood that governments will provide an authority to decide questions of justice, cultures vary in expectations of government applications of justice. Muslim majority countries such as Yemen apply Shari’a law to questions of justice. Traditional avenues of justice involve community authorities and judges hearing public cases, and social justice is considered an important aspect of religious life. Social justice in Islam emphasizes fairness and equal distribution of goods for all members of society, a practice established to protect women, the elderly, and those without community. It promises dignity and respect for each other regardless of ability.

Expectations of justice in Muslim majority countries place governance at the crossroads of religion, social, and cultural norms where governments must allocate resources to ensure survival and growth for both citizens and national institutions. Just leadership requires application of Islamic values and ethics, regardless of democratic status. Successful institutions of leadership must adhere to normative codes and keep the cultural favor of the people. Obviously this is a moving target and in practice, much of the judiciary system suffers from corruption.

Yemen’s judiciary was established in 1991 by their constitution, in which the Supreme Judicial Council appoints judges and reviews judicial policies. Officially, the courts hear civil, criminal, and family matters. All laws emerge from Shari’a tradition, and judges rule on the constitutionality of laws and cases without trial by jury. The courts are authorized to provide counsel for defendants, but in severe cases the right to an attorney has been denied. Local tribal authorities also have the ability to rule on non-criminal cases, though in actuality they decide criminal cases as well. Tribal leaders regularly address informal public complaints, and tribal mediation is often in pursuit of restorative justice, which seeks to reestablish relationships between the victims and the perpetrators. A combination of informal and formal, shari’a and customary law, and international principles makes the Yemeni justice system complex but navigable.

Systems of Governance

Yemen became a unified nation out of North and South Yemen in 1990. The country has experienced civil war since 2015 and though there is an official ceasefire, the violence and death continues. It is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East due in part to weak infrastructure: in 2023, 21.6 million citizens require assistance in the form of food or cash. High unemployment rates, high poverty rates, high illiteracy rates, and malnutrition due in part to high food prices led people to hope that the Arab Spring and the succession of President Hadi in 2012 would make a change.

Those watching the conflict closely are undecided on the status of Yemen’s official government: is it more authoritarianism or a hybrid regime? Transition from Saleh to Hadi did very little to change the authoritarian status quo, marginalizing groups that initially supported the transition during the uprising, including the young revolutionary Houthis. Over the past decade, the Houthi rebels have gained control of most local power structures with the support of the delegitimized Saleh after his initial ousting, while the international community recognized the Hadi administration. This led local governments to support Islamist Houthis in return for stability: the Houthis inherited Saleh’s military apparatus, making them the most capable regional military power. As the most cohesive political and military power, the Houthis have taken over many of the remaining state institutions and civil servants in the capital. Local systems of governance have been identified as some of Yemen’s most important institutions as violence and corruption threaten citizens and official government practices. In Yemen, local councils are most effective when they are decentralized. Territoriality, functional responsibility,

political autonomy, fiscal authority, and electoral process decide the organization of local governance. American local governments enjoy fiscal and political autonomy, derive an electoral process from the federal model, and through fiscal stability are able to complete methodic responsibilities. In the developing world, an effect of colonialism is the decentralization of power through local authorities. Lacking proper support from a central government, local governance requires strong accountability from the citizens. The Special Judicial Council is the judicial authority in Yemen under the Houthi government. The Houthis operate with a similar judicial structure in name only; the authorities make it notoriously difficult to ascertain if the law is being followed. There is no evidence of the independent judiciary that is established in the constitution. There have been many reports of unjustified violence authorized by the Council, and it is increasingly rare that the government provides defense counsel or full evidence, though defendants are allowed to procure their own defense. Arbitrary deprivation of life, interference with privacy, denial of constitutional and human rights are common under the Houthi regime. It is clear that justice is not being applied by the Houthi and Hadi governments.

US Interference and Civil Unrest

The civil war in Yemen is widely accepted as the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history. Prior to the establishment of the Republic of Yemen in 1994, the nations of North and South Yemen gained independence from the British Empire in 1990. Civil unrest persisted throughout the early 2000s and reached a frenzy when citizens took part in the Arab Spring Uprising as a result of poor economic conditions, weak infrastructure, and then president Saleh’s attempts to amend the constitution to suspend presidential term limits. Keeping with the foreign policy norms of the region, The United States openly supported the Saleh regime before and during the mass Arab Spring protests because the country is geographically located to carry out counterterrorist measures. When the domestic uprisings to remove Saleh from power took place, the US was slow to support the democratic ideology of the people. US influence in Yemen has been denounced as shortsighted with “political interests embedded in an ideological platform rather than a real movement for change (Aliboni and Gauzzone, 2004). When it became clear the dictatorship was collapsing, the United States worked to maintain the main power structures which would serve American - and in turn, Saudi - interests. Time and again the US has prioritized its relationship with Saudi Arabia to ensure favorable oil and gas prices; this has resulted in failure to apply justice oriented policy toward Yemen.

Several inconsistencies in US policy weakened the ability for a just change of power at the hands of the people. Obama supported a case by case basis of support for democratic reform in countries participating in the Arab Spring, rather than supporting governments that allowed for equal application of the laws to all people. In Yemen, the US chose to maintain the status quo and maintain counterterrorist ties with Saleh, weakening institutions for justice. The US brokered a deal with Saleh to step down from power and be replaced by his Vice President Hadi in 2014, but Saleh’s cling to power allowed further bloodshed. “High hopes for a transition to democracy faded away as most of the uprisings sunk in bloodshed and extremism” (Ibrahim 2016). Single candidate election power transferred from Saleh to Hadi and national dialogue ensued to create a new constitution. Hadi was quickly ousted by the Houthi group in 2015, who rejected the new constitution.

The 2014 Houthi terrorist group initiated a coup that quickly led to the 2015 civil war, with intense military intervention from Saudi Arabia. Obama authorized Saudi use of US logistics and intelligence in addition to urging the Houthis to cease destabilizing the Yemeni state (Obama Archives, 2015). However, disputes within the Saudi-led coalition regarding priorities allowed the international coalition to stray further from justice oriented policy. Some in the coalition were intent on defending Iran from rebel attacks while others were concerned with the threat of political islam and the muslim brotherhood towards the emirates. As of 2022, 9,000 Yemeni civilians have died from airstrikes supported, funded, and trained by the US (Washington Post, 2022) . Additionally, there are over 4.3 million internally displaced people in Yemen; over 24 million people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid, which comes in the form of food and cash. The international players contributed to Yemen’s destabilization and crippled efforts by local Yemeni governments to enforce justice.

Though local authorities have found themselves aligned with the rebel government, the US has continuously supported Hadi as elected leader because of the benefits to their counterterrorism efforts. This decision to support the official government under Hadi is not beneficial to the average citizen because Hadi’s administration cannot take steps to stabilize the region without local support. Hadi has not proven interested in adjudicating disputes between his administration, the Houthi rebels, and the Saleh loyalists. His lack of negotiation destabilized the nation because he failed to formally interact with the rebel groups and the Saleh loyalists via an interpretation committee. The US’s failure to support a more justice oriented government in Yemen allowed the rebel groups to amass the power they have today. Though technically the Hadi administration is still in power, Hadi himself is currently under house arrest in Saudi Arabia. The rebel groups have more control over the citizenship than the official regime. The growing power of the Houthi rebels has brought the country even further from humane standards and ethical systems. The judicial rights of Yemeni citizens are in decline because the central government was more concerned with staying in power than distributing justice to their people.

At this point, Yemen’s already weak infrastructure has been decimated by US, Saudi, and regional military coalitions. The Obama and Trump administrations supported Saudi-led attacks and blockades on the Yemeni populations, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and internal displacement, in addition to the humanitarian crisis that has resulted in thousands of malnourished children. Yemen’s government lacks the capacity to support civilians and has allowed corruption to rule in place of justice. Increasing chaos and decreasing political autonomy have undermined Yemen’s self-determination and placed a strain on the local governance communities ability to adjudicate properly. The US abandoned justice oriented foreign policy; rebuilding systems of governance requires a return to justice internationally and locally. Establishing Justice Oriented Systems in April 2023, one year after the cease-fire in Yemen, the Biden Administration issued a statement reiterating the United States relationship with Yemen: “Maintaining this truce and strengthening progress toward peace has been a main focus of my administration’s engagement with our partners in the Middle East. ....The United States remains fully committed to our partners in the region, and to supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE from Iranian enabled attacks” (Biden, 2023). Over the past seven years, the US has sold $36 billion in arms to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Thus the Biden Administration continues to forgo justice oriented policy in favor of oil and gun sales.

In order to interact justly with Yemen, the US needs to focus its attention on supporting local governance and judicial systems. Citizens have proven that they are willing to support any local government that has the institutional capacity to provide the necessary resources to survive: food, clean water, electricity, etc. International actors have rushed reforms that fail to account for dynamics between citizens and regional powers.The UN Security Council published a resolution in 2015 calling for the withdrawal of the Houthi rebels. The US under Biden has decided to prioritize conflict management in Yemen, without specifying what economic or administrative action would be taken to achieve this. Since the Yemen government needs to prioritize conflict management and social services to feed and house its population, the best point of entry for revitalizing and strengthening US-Yemen relations is for the US to provide economic support to achieve this goal.

In this age of political turmoil, Yemen would benefit from justice oriented foreign policy on the part of the United States. As the controlling rebel groups continue to oppress the local population, access to systems of justice becomes increasingly difficult. The US can support Yemen’s transition to a more stable, humanitarian, and just country by providing economic and judicial support via organizations focused on nation and community building. The UN Development Program is one such initiative that emphasizes inclusive community safety and “increased awareness of rights and use of fair and effective formal and informal justice systems” (2023). By adhering to the justice ethics framework, the US can seek out institutions that are strategically able to target local networks. Justice oriented policy can help shape Yemen’s infrastructure, achieving conflict management by building a more stable government that is less vulnerable to terrorist organizations. Emphasizing transitional justice in Yemen is an ethical path for the US to combat terrorism and stabilize the region.

Going forward with my research, I would like to focus on some questions I was not able to answer in this paper surrounding discussions of justice oriented foreign policy. What are the responsibilities of institutions on individuals they affect but are not an authority over? If individuals under a government institution are treated unequally by a different institution, who is responsible for establishing corrective justice? A founding principle of justice is interdependence, yet some nations have commensalistic relationships. How are nations that interact with but do not depend on each other meant to address injustices in our increasingly globalized political environment?

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