Yemen fifty years of diplomacy

On September 26 Yemen will mark its golden jubilee, 50 year anniversary since Yemen launched its immortal revolution. Diplomatic relations between Yemen and other countries received a strong push after the revolution.

Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a press conference in Sana'a after signing the International land and marine borders treaty between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Prior to the revolution diplomatic ties with the rest of the world were few. However, diplomatic ties with communist china were especially significant because at that  period Yemen had little relations with its neighbors let alone relations with a country as far distant as china. In this article we shall use the term diplomatic to mean foreign relations whether with states which strictly call under the purview of diplomacy or with  regional and global organizations. The terms will be used interchangeably.

Yemen is a member of the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Yemen participates in the nonaligned movement. The Republic of Yemen accepted responsibility for all treaties and debts of its predecessors, the YAR and the PDRY. Yemen has acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has stressed the need to render the Middle East region free of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

North Yemen

The geography and ruling Imams of North Yemen kept the country isolated from foreign influence before 1962  During the 1920s, the government of Yemen forged relations with the Italian government under Mussolini, which lead to the conclusion of an Italian-Yemeni friendship treaty on September 2, 1926.

This gave the Sana'a government diplomatic support vis-a-vis the Saudi government which were defined by the Treaty of Taif  of 1934 which delineated the northernmost part of the border between the two kingdoms and set the framework for commerce and other interactions. The Taif Agreement has been renewed periodically in 20-year increments, and its validity was reaffirmed in 1995.

The Soviet and Communist Chinese Aid Missions established in 1958 and 1959 were the first important non-Muslim presence in North Yemen. Following the September 1962 revolution, the Yemen Arab Republic became closely allied with and heavily dependent upon Egypt. Saudi Arabia aided the royalists in their attempt to defeat the republicans and did not recognize the Yemen Arab Republic until 1970. Subsequently, Saudi Arabia provided Yemen substantial budgetary and project support.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia maintained direct contact with Yemeni tribes, which sometimes strained its official relations with the Yemeni government. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis found employment in Saudi Arabia during the late 1970s and 1980s.


Yemen’s foreign policy during the 80s and 90s was characterized by the principles of "positive neutrality" and Arab unity. Yemen cultivated close ties with Saudi Arabia and other pro-West states in the region. it also purchased military equipment from the United States and expanded economic relations with the West. At the same time, Yemen also tried to maintain friendly relations with the then-Soviet Union. In October 1984, it renewed the treaty of Friendship and Cooperation that was originally signed in 1964 by Sana'a and Moscow.

In February 1989, North Yemen joined Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt informing the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC), an organization created partly in response to the founding of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and intended to foster closer economic cooperation and integration among its members. After unification, the Republic of Yemen was accepted as a member of the ACC in place of its YAR predecessor. In the wake of the First Gulf war, the ACC has remained inactive.

South Yemen

British authorities left South Yemen in November 1967 in the wake of the October revolution. The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, the successor to British colonial rule, had diplomatic relations with many nations, but its major links were with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Relations between it and the conservative Arab states of the Arabian Peninsula were strained. There were military clashes with Saudi Arabia in 1969 and 1973, and the PDRY provided active support for the Dhofar Rebellion against the Sultanate of Oman. The PDRY was the only Arab state to vote against admitting new Arab states from the Gulf area to the United Nations and the Arab League. The PDRY provided sanctuary and material support to various international terrorist groups.

Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a press conference in Sana'a after signing the International land and marine borders treaty between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Unified Yemen

The 1991 Gulf War dramatically affected Yemen's foreign relations. As a member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for 1990 and 1991, Yemen abstained on a number of UNSC resolutions concerning Iraq and Kuwait and voted against the "use of force resolution". Western and Gulf Arab states reacted by curtailing or canceling aid programs and diplomatic contacts. At least 850,000 Yemenis returned from Saudi Arabia and the other arab  Gulf countries.

After the liberation of Kuwait, Yemen continued to maintain high-level contacts with Iraq. This hampered its efforts to rejoin the Arab mainstream and to mend fences with its immediate neighbors. In 1993, Yemen launched an unsuccessful diplomatic offensive to restore relations with its Gulf neighbors. Some of its aggrieved neighbors actively aided the south during the 1994 civil war.

 Since the end of that conflict, tangible progress has been made on the diplomatic front in restoring normal relations with Yemen's neighbors.

The Omani-Yemeni border has been officially demarcated. In the summer of 2000, Yemen and Saudi Arabia signed an International Border Treaty settling a 50-year-old dispute over the location of the border between the two countries. Yemen settled its dispute with Eritrea over the Hanish Islands in 1998.

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