Understanding Community Resilience in Yemen

ARK Group is delighted to be partnering with the Mershon Centre for International Security Studies, Ohio State University, on the project ‘Understanding Community Resilience in Yemen.’ We will be conducting primary, mixed-methods research in 6 governorates across Yemen, in urban and rural locations, to identify the embedded institutions, networks, resources, and norms that enhance community resilience; identify the key vulnerabilities in those communities and the barriers to community resilience; and understand in greater depth how community members perceive risks and threats to their communities. 

The concept of community resilience is now widely used across a range of related thematic areas, including humanitarian, development, and conflict resolution/peacebuilding fields. Peacebuilding and development scholars and practitioners have learned from and adapted the concept while adding a greater emphasis on a more dynamic conceptualisation of resilience, which confers greater agency to local communities. Still, as with other related concepts applied to contexts of conflict and fragility, the assumption of what constitutes community resilience is susceptible of becoming a top-down, one-size-fits all notion which overlooks local perceptions of what community resilience means and how it is sustained and undermined in any given case. It is thus key to reconcile expert and donor perceptions of community resilience and related programmatic and funding priorities with the perceptions and evolving priorities of local communities.

The aim will be to assist local communities and relevant stakeholders to address or reduce local risks and threats to community resilience and empower or leverage existing efforts to strengthen community resilience. The findings of this research will be shared with the international donor community as well as ARK’s local partners and those research participants involved in relevant activities. We hope this project will contribute to ongoing and future efforts to support local communities in Yemen in the face of daunting set of critical challenges, the latest of which is a tragic uptick of COVID-19 cases across the country.