SUMMARY

Arab Spring protests

In early January 2011, the ruling party announced that it would seek to remove the limit on the number of terms in office for the president. This triggered widespread resistance as many in Yemen feared that President Saleh, who had ruled for more than three decades (first as president of North Yemen and since 1990 as president of the unified Yemen), would retain his office for life.

At the same time, Yemen faced daunting challenges; an unemployment rate of about 40 percent, falling oil production, a looming water shortage, and widespread poverty. Furthermore, the country which was awash with millions of weapons was already involved in several armed conflicts, while society regularly experienced localized outbreaks of tribal clashes.

When the Tunisian and the Egyptian presidents were ousted in early 2011, in the wave of protests which soon was named the Arab Spring, calls for Saleh’s resignation were rapidly voiced by students, opposition activists, and civil society organizations. Thousands of protesters held largely peaceful demonstrations in mainly Sanaa, Aden, and Taiz, but were increasingly met with lethal violence from government forces and regime supporters.

The Yemen protesters who took to the streets in early 2011 gained considerable inspiration and strength from the protests in Tunisia and Egypt, but at the same time, several groups have been calling for reforms in Yemen for many years. One example is the Southern Movement (SM) which had been calling for reform, but later primarily independence for South Yemen, since 2007. In early 2011, parts of the group initially joined hands with the protestors in the north and temporarily toned down the call for secession. However, cooperation eventually declined mainly due to disagreement over the future status of the south. The governments response to the protests was harsh, with around 300 unarmed protesters as well as another hundred involved in violent protests killed by government forces. A massacre on 18 March, now known as the Friday of Dignity, which killed around seventy protesters in Sanaa caused severe defections from the regime.

Several armed factions, notably Free Yemeni Army, Islah and Alliance of Yemeni Tribes, took up arms as a result of the massacre and fought against the government during the year. Ansarallah, a Zaydi religious movement that had fought the government in several intense rounds of fighting with thousands of fatalities, also claimed to join the protestors cause and called for reforms and Saleh’s resignation. The protests lasted throughout 2011 and eventually forced Saleh to sign a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) brokered a deal on 23 November 2011. By signing, he promised, in return for an amnesty, to relinquish all presidential powers by February 2012, when Vice-President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi would be elected interim President for a two-year period. As planned, this change in power indeed became effective on 21 February 2012.

The Government of Yemen first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 2011. The threshold of 25 civilian deaths was reached on 25 February, about a month into the protests, as the government fired on a peaceful sit-in protest in Aden city. Nearly 300 people died in peaceful protests during the year, in addition to over 100 killed in violent political protests, and thousands in the armed conflict over government.

Ansarallah government

On 20 January 2015, Ansarallah captured the capital Sanaa and thus became the Government of Yemen in UCDP data. The Zaydi religious regime has established a strict rule over the areas of Yemen which it controls. It was active in the one-sided violence category every year between 2020-2025, with the exception of 2023.

Most one-sided violence committed by the Yemeni government in 2020 was in a single event on 16 April in Sadah government close to the border with Saudi Arabia. Witnesses said 40 migrants, mostly from Ethiopia, were massacred by Ansarallah fighters in an attempt to force them across the border into Saudi Arabia. Attacks by the government on migrants were common during the year, as they were blamed for the spread of Covid-19.

Acts of one-sided violence has since regularly been committed by Ansarallah security forces against migrants and family members of suspected opponents of the regime, as well as in connection to extortion at markets and at checkpoints. Some instances of killing of peaceful protesters has also been recorded. Retaliatory attacks against the families of tribal fighters have become relatively common as resistance towards enforced indoctrination and recruitment have clashed with tribal norms, in particular among Sunni tribes. Several instances of public mass executions has also taken place.