In an atmosphere of great sense of responsibility for Yemen’s suffering from the horrific tragedy of the war that is about to enter its eighth year after it has left more than half a million dead, injured and disabled.

In light of the current stalemate at the military and political level, with the regional and international role ended with opening an airport here or a port there, while about four million displaced people are reliant on humanitarian aid and other twenty million are living below the poverty line, given the comprehensive destruction of infrastructure and due to the Arab coalition’s deviation from its primary  mission and its resort to forming militias, creating cantons here and there and appointing the leaders of armed factions to the positions of State leadership, our conference is today convened in Washington with the participation of friends from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Tawakkol Karman Foundation and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), in the presence of the US envoy to Yemen, Timothy Lenderking. 

We, the participants at the conference "Towards Sustainable Peace and Democracy in Yemen", held at Georgetown University in Washington in December 09, 2023, very much appreciate the convening of this meeting that provided the opportunity to freely and openly discuss the political and humanitarian situation in Yemen, and we express our deep thanks to the facilitators of our meeting and to brothers and friends who attended it and expressed their solidarity with the Yemeni people who has  been suffering from extremely bad conditions for nearly eight years.

We, the participants, affirm that the achievement of true peace requires the local parties involved in this war or the regional actors, including especially the Arab coalition and the international community, to assume their responsibility towards the following demands:

- We emphasize the need to uphold the unity of Yemen and the republican system without compromising sovereignty or detracting from the project of a federal, civil and democratic State, as affirmed by the national dialogue outcomes. We here welcome the efforts of the international community in support of this right as stipulated in the UNSC resolutions.

- We stress the urgent need to convene a Yemeni national conference that includes all Yemeni factions in order to have a new Yemeni leadership. This leadership should reflect the interests of the Yemeni people based on mechanisms consistent with the spirit of the Yemeni constitution, achieve a comprehensive national consensus on the new leadership taking on the task of starting peace negotiations, emphasize the Yemenis’ right to a federal, civil, democratic State that deals with human rights, justice and equality as the basis of its existence. Besides, the new leadership will have also to call on the international community to support this right, especially since the mechanism followed to form the existing leadership has brought the peace efforts of the UN and US envoys to a near dead end.

- We, the conference participants, demand that the Houthis comply with the aspirations and hopes of the Yemenis for a comprehensive and sustainable peace based on the foundations defined in the draft establishment of a federal, civil, democratic state that safeguards the interests of all Yemenis across the entire country, and ensures equal partnership of power and wealth to all Yemenis. A Houthi acceptance of a cease-fire and engaging in serious negotiations would be the shortest way to get the country out of the state of fighting and war to peace and scotch all attempts to tear and fragment Yemen, whose success is dependent on the Houthi refusal to the call by local, regional or international parties for peace. 

- We emphasize that the disarmament of militias and annexation of all armed forces to be under the control of the Ministries of Defense and Interior are the best way to get out of the state of fragmentation that poses a major obstacle to reaching peace.

- We see it is important for the State to be the holder of the exclusive right to possess weapons, and no political, sectarian, regional or tribal party is entitled to continue owning weapons and use them as an existential threat to the State and to its entity and foundations.

- Any future political settlement for Yemen must be based on what was agreed upon in the outcomes of the national dialogue that formed the basis for the draft constitution federal state before it was undermined by a coup and war, and that the political process includes all Yemenis without exception because departing from the document of the national dialogue that The Yemenis agreed to it, which means returning to the factors and causes that produced the wars that tore Yemen apart for decades. Having a clear pathway to transitional justice is one of the means to eliminate the causes of war recurrence and the long-standing factors of disintegration that have been eating away at the Yemeni body for decades.

- We stress the need for the call for peace to be accompanied by another call for an international conference for the reconstruction of Yemen, provided that the two tracks of peace and reconstruction are simultaneously completed because the economic aspects, rebuilding what was destroyed by the war and addressing poverty are among the basic requirements for durable peace.

- We underline the priority of releasing all abductees and prisoners, ensuring their compensation and rehabilitation, and closing all prisons and detention centers.

- We also call for the immediate and unconditional lifting of all forms of internal and external blockade on the Republic of Yemen, including the Saudi-Emirati ban on the export of gas and oil derivatives.

- We stress the need for all foreign troops to leave Yemen and hand over ports, islands and foreign military bases to the Yemenis.

- Finally, we salute the struggles of Yemeni women, youth, students and all other groups, praise their eagerness and effective contributions to get out of the devastating war to a comprehensive peace and appreciate their steadfastness and patience in the face of hardships and pains caused by the war.

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