Yemen's politics: one constitution and two governments since 2015

What the constitution of the republic provides

The constitution of the Republic of Yemen was agreed at unification in May 1990, ratified by referendum in May 1991 and amended in 1994 and 2001. Its first article declares the republic an Arab, Islamic and independent sovereign state "whose integrity is inviolable, and no part of which may be ceded". Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic its official language, and Article 3 makes Islamic Sharia "the source of all legislation".

On paper the system is a presidential republic with a prime minister. The president is elected by direct popular vote for a seven-year term, at most twice, and appoints the vice-president and the prime minister, who heads the government. The legislature has two houses. The House of Representatives has 301 members elected for six years by secret, free and direct vote; the Consultative Council, or Shura, has 111 members appointed by the president. The House can amend the constitution by a two-thirds vote. Political parties must be licensed, and parties based on region, tribe, sect or ethnicity are banned, Britannica notes.

Below the centre, united Yemen adopted the southern system of governorates. The Politics of Yemen article lists 21 of them and the capital district of Sanaa, Amanat al-Asimah; Britannica counts 20 besides Sanaa. Governors were appointed by the president until May 2008, when they were elected for the first time. The courts run from a court of first instance in each district to a court of appeals in each governorate and a Supreme Court in the capital, under a Supreme Judicial Council.

Why Yemen has held no national vote for years

The framework has not been used in full for well over a decade. The last parliamentary election was held in 2003, and the six-year mandate of that parliament expired in 2009; the vote was postponed again in 2011 during the uprising against Ali Abdullah Saleh. The last presidential election, in February 2012, had one candidate, his vice-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who took a two-year interim term under a Gulf Cooperation Council agreement that gave Saleh immunity from prosecution.

The transition was meant to produce a new constitution. The National Dialogue Conference, which brought more than 500 delegates together from 2013, concluded in January 2014 with a plan for a federal state of six regions and extended Hadi's term by a year. A drafting committee finished a new text in January 2015, but no referendum took place: Houthi forces had taken Sanaa in September 2014, and the war and the Saudi-led intervention followed in March 2015. Freedom House records that the parliament was disbanded in early 2015 and that both sides have since kept remnant legislatures that meet infrequently.

Who governs from Aden and who from Sanaa

Two authorities claim the state, and the sources record each claim in its own words.

How the recognised government came to Aden

After the Houthis took the presidential palace, Hadi escaped to Aden on 21 February 2015, withdrew his resignation and called for recognition as the constitutional president; the next month he declared Aden the temporary capital. The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2216 on 14 April 2015, and its members still refer to it, as in a press statement of 18 September 2026 that reaffirmed their support for the Government of Yemen and stressed full implementation of the resolution, including its targeted arms embargo on the Houthis.

On 7 April 2022, during a UN-brokered truce, Hadi transferred his powers to a Presidential Leadership Council of eight members, chosen by delegates meeting in Riyadh under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The decree transferred the powers of the president and vice-president to the council and gave its chairman the power to command the military and appoint governors. The Southern Transitional Council held three of the eight seats by May 2023. Freedom House describes the council in its 2025 report as largely dependent on its foreign patrons, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

How the Houthis set up their own institutions

The Houthi movement, which calls itself Ansar Allah, issued a "Constitutional Declaration" on 6 February 2015 that kept the existing constitution in force wherever it did not conflict with the declaration. It created a Supreme Revolutionary Committee, a National Transitional Council of 551 members to replace the dissolved House of Representatives, and a five-member Presidency Council, and promised a referendum on a new constitution and elections within two years. Its preamble says "the leadership of the revolution" acted on "the mandate they received from the people", against rulers it called tyrannical. The UN and foreign governments rejected the declaration, and none of its promised votes has taken place. In 2016 the Houthis formed a Supreme Political Council, which exercises executive power in the areas they hold and appoints a prime minister and cabinet, according to Freedom House.

How tribes and patronage shaped the state

Formal institutions were never the whole of Yemeni government. Britannica describes tribal affiliation as a deep component of social identity, with some confederations whose histories span more than two millennia, and as a basis of political organisation that survived the efforts of both pre-unification governments to abolish it. In rural Yemen, the Politics of Yemen article says, direct state control is weak and tribal confederations act as autonomous sub-states.

Under Saleh the settlement that held the republic together was informal. The Yemen article describes a power-sharing arrangement among three men: Saleh, who controlled the state; Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who commanded the largest share of the armed forces; and Sheikh Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar, head of the Islah party and the channel through which Saudi Arabia paid tribal sheikhs and other political players. Britannica's account of the 1990s and 2000s is harsher: an oligarchy of military officers, tribal sheikhs and northern businessmen that it calls a kleptocracy, in which the state worked mainly to enrich those who ran it.

Women's place in the formal system has narrowed. Women made up 30% of the National Dialogue Conference's delegates, and its final agreement called for similar representation in every branch of government under a new constitution. Only one woman won a seat in the 2003 parliamentary election, and Freedom House records that no woman was appointed to the power-sharing cabinet of 2020 or to the Presidential Leadership Council in 2022.

Armed groups crowd the space parties once used. Freedom House lists Houthi forces, extremist groups including al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, southern separatists, coalition troops, government troops and local militias as the obstacles to ordinary political activity.

How the south's demand for a separate state fared

Southern grievance is older than the war. Protests that began in 2007 among retired officers spread to civil servants, lawyers and teachers who accused the government of systematic discrimination against the south since 1994, and some of them described unification as an occupation, Britannica writes. The Southern Transitional Council was formed in 2017 as a faction of the wider Southern Movement, with backing from the United Arab Emirates, and called for a "State of South Arabia" along the borders of the former South Yemen; the name echoes the British-created Federation of South Arabia.

The council fought alongside the government against the Houthis for most of the war and against it at times. It seized Aden in January 2018, declared self-rule in April 2020 and took Socotra that June. A Saudi-brokered Riyadh Agreement, signed in November 2019, brought its members into the cabinet in December 2020, and three of its members later sat on the Presidential Leadership Council.

In December 2025 the council launched a campaign to take Hadhramaut and al-Mahra. Its leader, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, said that "the next stage will be the stage of building institutions of the future state of South Arabia", and four non-STC members of the Presidential Leadership Council resolved on 22 December 2025 to suspend any official who supported secession. The council dismissed al-Zoubaidi on 7 January 2026. A counter-offensive with Saudi support defeated the STC, and Britannica records that it was formally disbanded in January 2026 and that the Emirates withdrew its forces from Yemen, including from Socotra.

Who backs which side from abroad

Saudi Arabia announced Operation Decisive Storm on 26 March 2015 and led a coalition that included the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt and Pakistan, with intelligence, targeting and logistical support from the United States. The Emirates drew down its own forces from 2019 and, in Britannica's account, kept backing the southern separatists until 2026.

Iran's role is the most disputed claim of the war. Britannica writes that Iran's Quds Force supplied the Houthis' weapons and training, and Freedom House says only that the Houthis receive at least some support from Iran; the Houthis and the Iranian government have both denied any military affiliation. The United States designated the movement a terrorist organisation in January 2021, revoked the designation the next month and restored it in January 2024 after the attacks on Red Sea shipping, which Freedom House reports the Houthis began in November 2023 with the stated aim of punishing Israel for its war in Gaza.

Mediation has run through Oman and the United Nations. Omani-mediated talks between Saudi and Houthi officials resumed in April 2023, and a Houthi delegation visited Riyadh that September. The UN Special Envoy's mandate rests on the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative of 2011 and the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference. In a briefing to the Security Council on 10 September 2026 the envoy said that the renewed fighting effectively marked the end of more than four years of relative calm since the 2022 truce.

How rights fare under both authorities

Freedom House rated Yemen "Not Free" in its 2025 report, with 10 points out of 100: 1 of 40 for political rights and 9 of 60 for civil liberties. Its report finds that civilians have suffered violence and repression from both sides and that no functioning central government controls the whole territory.

Its specific findings fall on all parties. The Yemeni Journalists' Syndicate documented 101 violations of media freedom in 2024. In Houthi-held areas the report records the detention of critics, harsh penalties including death sentences, the arrest of 17 Baha'i residents of Sanaa in May 2023, and the detention of more than 60 UN and aid workers in May and June 2024, whom Houthi authorities accused of belonging to an "American-Israeli spy network"; the Security Council demanded the release of 73 UN personnel on 18 September 2026. In areas held by forces aligned with the Emirates, it reports arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of members of the Islah party, and permits that civil society groups in Aden had to obtain from the STC. Coalition air strikes, the report says, regularly failed to distinguish military from civilian targets, and Houthi artillery fire was similarly indiscriminate.

The same report counts the Muhamasheen, also called the Akhdam, a caste-like minority with possible East African origins and marginalised in politics and society, at as much as 10% of the population, and records that the group had one delegate at the National Dialogue Conference.