Presented at VII International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, Iran

Abstract
Since 2023 the intra-Yemeni conflict has entered a phase of growing internal fragmentation, in which local rivalries increasingly overlay the national-level divide between the Houthi movement and the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC). The UN Special Envoy for Yemen has repeatedly warned that the official political process, structured as a bilateral negotiation between the two principal armed actors, is not designed to absorb this fragmentation, which is driven in large part by tribal, regional and confessional structures operating outside the formal track.
The purpose of this report is to assess the structural gap between the UN-mediated official peace process and Yemen's informal tribal institutions, and to examine the consequences of this gap for the durability of confidence-building measures reached at the elite level. The research is thematically confined to the mediating, legitimating and spoiling functions performed by tribal actors; temporally it covers the period from 2014, marking the onset of the civil war, to mid-2026; spatially it focuses on southern and central Yemen, where the redistribution of local power has been most pronounced.
This study is based on a systematic review of primary UN documentation (Security Council briefings, Special Envoy statements) and secondary academic and policy sources on Yemen for 2023-2026, applying a comparative case-study framework to two illustrative episodes: the resumption of Saudi-Houthi contacts in 2025, which regional analysts link to pre-emptive action by the Southern Transitional Council, and the conflict-related detainee exchange of 14 May 2026, whose implementation depended substantially on informal local intermediaries rather than the formal negotiating track.
The findings indicate that the exclusion of tribal institutions from the formal UN-led track does not neutralise their influence but instead channels it into spoiling behaviour and parallel, informal diplomacy, which in practice has proven more effective than the official process in resolving narrow, technical issues such as prisoner releases, while remaining unable to produce a durable political settlement.
Building on these findings, the paper proposes the establishment of a permanent consultative mechanism linking the Office of the Special Envoy with tribal and local mediators, modelled on the existing gender-focused advisory arrangements, as a parallel confidence-building track capable of complementing rather than substituting for the official negotiations. Such a mechanism would help translate ad hoc humanitarian successes into a more inclusive and sustainable political process.
Keywords: Yemen conflict, tribal mediation, UN peace process, informal actors, conflict resolution.