The Business of Peace and the Politics of Inclusion: The Role of Local Business Actors in Yemen (2011–16)
This chapter explores the role that businesses played in Yemen 2011-2016 and their place in the strategies of UN mediators. Research demonstrates that businesses – including ‘formal’ and ‘informal’, ‘licit’ and ‘illicit’ play distinctly political roles in war to peace transitions, as conflict instigators, mediators, benefactors and beneficiaries; indeed, such actors are normally deeply enmeshed simultaneously in the production of statehood, and in processes that undermine it through networks of patronage, nepotism and corruption. Yet the increasing recognition of the negative and positive roles played by businesses in countries in conflict has yet to translate into the consistent inclusion of these so-called ‘economic actors’ in peace negotiations and of ‘economic issues’ in peace settlements. The marginalisation – and in some instances omission - of such actors sheds light on and calls into question the discourse on inclusive peace processes.