The eruption of the 2015 war in Yemen was a turning point in the protracted, deep-rooted conflict. Support from various regional and international players for the domestic adversaries further...Show moreThe eruption of the 2015 war in Yemen was a turning point in the protracted, deep-rooted conflict. Support from various regional and international players for the domestic adversaries further contributed to the complexity of an already stagnant conflict. This thesis first examines the main drivers behind the war through the lens of intractability theory and subsequently establishes the primary factors resisting peace negotiations. This thesis demonstrates that in the Yemen conflict, protraction, identity denigration and polarized solutions are the primary obstacles on the domestic level, whereas geopolitics and profitability are regional factors contributing to the intractability of the conflict. Despite the fact that the conflict is presently in an intractable position, the recent and unprecedented initiation of peace consultations in Sweden has become a silver lining in the entrenched conflict. In relation to these developments, the second part of this thesis analyses whether the Yemen conflict is presently ripe for negotiations. Following this analysis, a variety of suggestions for inducing the transition from intractability towards tractability are presented. This thesis contributes to existing studies on intractable conflicts by applying intractability theory to the case of Yemen and by proposing various methods to ripen the conflict for negotiations.Show less
