Partners for Democratic Change, Yemen

Project profile

Since 2004 a civil war has raged across Northern Yemen killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing more than 250,000 people to abandon their homes. A fragile peace agreement has been in place since March 2010, but civilians continue to be at serious risk and to suffer from poverty, high unemployment rates, rapid population growth and severe water shortages. Young people living in rural areas have few choices or opportunities and are vulnerable to recruitment from extremist violent movements.

Long-standing tribal conflicts make an already critical situation even worse. Rural tribes fight over precious resources – clean water, grazing land for livestock and access to health and education facilities. These areas are remote and unstable; there is no state presence and no security for international organisations to work there.

While others have fled, local peacebuilder Ramzi Alabsi remains in what the Washington Post called the most lawless corner of Yemen. He believes in a better future for his country and his fellow people. Ramzi and his organization Partners for Democratic Change and its Center in Yemen (Partners-Yemen) want to stop the country’s long and damaging history of tribal conflict. They work, with local organisations and councils, to help establish sustainable systems for both short-term and long-term interventions. They succeed where others have failed because they know the local customs and have strong relationships with what they call ‘tribal friends’ – the trusted people who can work as go-betweens in tribal conflict.

Our driver was kidnapped because of a tribal conflict. The government couldn’t free him, but we did – through mediating with our tribal friends. A month later we even managed to peacefully negotiate for the return of our stolen car. - Ramzi

Partners-Yemen is developing guidelines for development in conflict-affected areas. They will work directly with over 400 local tribal leaders, tribal heads, religious figures, young people and women, so that the community can lead its development and find its own ways to solve conflict.

Once trained these leaders will run community forums that give different groups the space to come forward and find a resolution to their grievances. These groups will proactively work together to create projects designed to prevent conflict and build peace in their communities. Project-Yemen will fund the most promising of these programmes – helping make local people’s visions for peace a reality.