Yemen Fragile Lives In Hungry Times

Widespread hunger and chronic malnutrition have taken hold in Yemen. A protracted political stalemate over much of the past six months has left the government in paralysis, prompting a fuel crisis that has brought the economy to the verge of collapse. A recent study by Oxfam found many communities to be on the brink of disaster. In other parts of the country the United Nations has found that some vulnerable communities are now facing critical levels of malnutrition. Donors remain deeply divided over their approaches to the region's poorest country, thus delaying responses and hindering funding. Hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance have been suspended. As the crisis builds, however, inaction is no longer an option. Interventions that address both immediate humanitarian needs and longer-term structural concerns must be urgently scaled up.

Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas can be a core component of peacebuilding, providing support for the restoration of government functions, delivery of basic services, the rule of law, and economic revitalization. What has worked, why it has worked, and what is scalable and transferable, are key questions for both development practice and research into how peace is built and the interactive role of domestic and international processes therein. Despite a wealth of research into these questions, significant gaps remain. This volume speaks to these gaps through new analysis of a selected set of well-regarded aid interventions. Drawing on diverse scholarly and policy expertise, eight case study chapters span multiple domains and regions to analyse Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Programme, the Yemen Social Fund for Development, public financial management reform in Sierra Leone, Finn Church Aid’s assistance in Somalia, Liberia’s gender-sensitive police reform, the judicial facilitators programme in Nicaragua, UNICEF’s education projects in Somalia, and World Bank health projects in Timor-Leste. Analysis illustrates the significance of three broad factors in understanding why some aid interventions work better than others: the area of intervention and related degree of engagement with state institutions; local contextual factors such as windows of opportunity and the degree of local support; and programme design and management. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal International Peacekeeping. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351624572, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Humanitarians operate on the frontlines of today’s armed conflicts, where they regularly negotiate to provide assistance and to protect vulnerable civilians. This book explores this unique and under-researched field of humanitarian negotiation. It details the challenges faced by humanitarians negotiating with armed groups in Yemen, Myanmar, and elsewhere, arguing that humanitarians typically negotiate from a position of weakness. It also explores some of the tactics and strategies they use to overcome this power asymmetry to reach more favorable agreements. The author applies these findings to broader negotiation scholarship and investigates the implications of this research for the field and practice of humanitarianism. This book also demonstrates how non-state actors – both humanitarians and armed groups – have become increasingly potent diplomatic actors. It challenges traditional state-centric approaches to diplomacy and argues that non-state actors constitute an increasingly crucial vector through which international relations are replicated and reconstituted during contemporary armed conflict. Only by accepting these changes to the nature of diplomacy itself can the causes, symptoms, and solutions to armed conflict be better managed. This book will be of interest to scholars concerned with conflict resolution, negotiation, and mediation, as well as to humanitarian practitioners themselves.

Increasingly the Middle East and its growing population face a highly complex and fragile security system. The rich deposits of natural resources, such as oil and gas, suffer from a strained renewable resource base that includes water and arable land. This leads to water scarcity, desertification, and land degradation. Increasing population, industrialization, and urbanization put more and more demand on the food supply. Energy insecurity may not be generally associated with the Middle East, but the countries in the eastern Mediterranean part have been traditionally vulnerable to it as their fossil fuel endowments have been low. Another issue is the large-scale temporary labor migration and the large number of forced migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons. The book analyzes these emerging security challenges in a comprehensive and systematic manner. It draws national and regional security issues into both the global security and human security perspectives.

'Written with compassion and insight, Lackner confirms her standing as the foremost authority on Yemeni politics at work today.'- Eugene Rogan The democratic promise of Yemen's 2011 uprising quickly unravelled, triggering a shocking political and social crisis with serious implications for the future of the country and region. Fuelled by Arab and Western intervention, the infighting in Yemen descended into civil war, with thousands killed and millions facing starvation and deep social and political fragmentation. Suffering from a collapsed economy, the people of Yemen now face a desperate choice between the Huthi rebels on the one side and, on the other, a range of forces propped up by a Saudi-led coalition fed by Western arms. In this incisive, invaluable analysis, Helen Lackner uncovers the roots of the conflicts threatening the very survival of the Yemeni state and its people. This updated edition features a new preface and a new chapter on the problems of humanitarian aid in the country. 'Brimming with erudition and rich in analysis, Yemen in Crisis offers invaluable insight to seasoned observers and newcomers to the region alike.' - Moustafa Bayoumi 'An eminently valuable account of Yemen's modern history and current travails by someone who has made it her life's work to understand the country and its people.' - Roger Owen, Harvard University 'This timely book analyzes the deep roots of the crisis that gripped Yemen even before the destructive war against it created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Lackner is superbly equipped to trace the causes for the failure and collapse of the Yemeni state, under the inexorable pressures of neo-liberalism and regional and global rivalries.' - Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University 'A matchless geopolitical profile of the country, its history, its economic structures, and above all, its people.' - Tariq Ali, New Left Review This book is the best compact presentation of the background and dynamics of the social and political explosion that turned Yemen into the worst humanitarian crisis of today's world.' - Gilbert Achcar

States of Fragility 2020 sets a policy agenda for fragility at a critical turning point: the final countdown on Agenda 2030 is at hand, and the pandemic has reversed hard-fought gains. This report examines fragility as a story in two parts: the global state of fragility that existed before COVID-19, and the dramatic impact the pandemic is having on that landscape.

The book analyzes socioeconomic through the lens of a lawyer. In the past decade the world has witnessed some severe financial and economic crises, especially the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The author states that the socio-economic order has in the past four to five decades been thoroughly redesigned, generally favouring models that prioritize the free market over the public interest or even, more generally, government operation. He works out that during four to five decades, globalized, capitalist societies are facing a multiplicity of fundamental problems, such as: (1) increasing debt that severely burdens both the private and public sectors; (2) persistent poverty and an ever-increasing polarization between rich and poor, in addition to (3) intractable environmental problems that, fifty years after the Club of Rome's report entitled ‘Limits to growth’ (1972), has dragged the world into what in recent years has been referred to as "climate change." The book explains why all this is the direct result of value choices made from the late Middle Ages onwards, when in the Western world the societal models of that time were increasingly abandoned for a societal model that came to rely on the primacy of economic interests. The book not only subjects the ethical choices but also examines various problems it has caused and probes for possible ways out. This is an open access book.

Three years into the 2030 Agenda it is already apparent that those living in fragile contexts are the furthest behind. Not all forms of fragility make it to the public’s eye: fragility is an intricate beast, sometimes exposed, often lurking underneath, but always holding progress back. Conflict ...