Yemen

Yemen is a state in Western Asia, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast, and shares maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. It is the second largest Arab sovereign state on the peninsula, covering 555,000 square kilometers (214,000 square miles). The coastline stretches for about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles). Yemen's constitutionally declared capital and largest city is Sana'a, but the city has been under the control of the Houthi rebels since February 2015, as is Aden, which has also been controlled by the Southern Transitional Council since 2018. Its executive administration is in Riyadh. , Saudi Arabia.

In ancient times, Yemen was the home of the Sabaeans, a trading state that included parts of present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Later, in 275 CE, the Himyarite kingdom was influenced by Judaism. Christianity came in the fourth century. Islam spread rapidly in the seventh century, and Yemeni troops played a decisive role in the early Islamic conquests. In the 9-16 centuries, several dynasties arose, for example the Rasulid dynasty. The country was divided between the Ottoman and British empires in the 1800s. The Kingdom of the Zaydi Mutawakkilites in Yemen was created after the First World War before the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962. South Yemen remained under the British protectorate as a protectorate of Aden until 1967, when it became an independent state, and then a Marxist-Leninist state. The two Yemeni states merged into the modern Republic of Yemen (al-Jumhuriya al-Yamaniya) in 1990. President Ali Abdullah Saleh was the first president of the new republic until his resignation in 2012 following the Arab Spring.

Yemen has been in a political crisis since 2011, starting with street protests against poverty, unemployment, corruption and President Saleh's plan to amend Yemen's constitution and remove the presidential term limit. President Saleh resigned and the presidency was transferred to Abdrabbu Mansur Hadi. Since then, there has been a civil war in the country (along with military intervention under the leadership of Saudi Arabia aimed at rebuilding the Hadi government) with several proto-state entities claiming to rule Yemen: the Yemeni Cabinet, the Supreme Political Council, and the Southern Transitional Council. ... Since January 2016, armed violence in Yemen has killed at least 56,000 civilians and combatants. The war led to famine, which affected 17 million people. The lack of safe drinking water, caused by the depletion of aquifers and the destruction of the country's water infrastructure, also caused the largest and fastest growing cholera outbreak in modern history, with more than 994 suspected cases.More than 2,226 people have died since then. the outbreak began to spread rapidly at the end of April 2017. The ongoing humanitarian crisis and conflict has received widespread criticism for dramatically aggravating the humanitarian situation in Yemen, which has reached the level of "humanitarian catastrophe" by some, and even called it genocide by some. This worsened the already poor human rights situation in the country.

Yemen is a member of the League of Arab States, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It belongs to the group of least developed countries, referring to the many “major structural barriers to sustainable development”. In 2019, the UN reported that Yemen is the country with the largest number of people in need of humanitarian assistance, with about 24 million, or 85% of its population. As of 2020, the country ranks first in the State Vulnerability Index, the second worst in the Global Hunger Index, behind only the Central African Republic, and has the lowest human development index of any non-African country.