Yemen-Saudi Arabia land boundary arbitration

On June 12, 2000, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Yemen signed an agreement which finally delineated the border between the two states. Previous to doing so, the lack of a boundary between the two had become known as the “last missing fence in the desert,” i.e. the last remaining border in Peninsular Arabia which was as yet to be agreed.

The dispute had its origin in the withdrawal of Ottoman influence on the Arabian Peninsula, a growing regional awareness of the notion of the “state” and a complex power-play between tribal and dynastic groups within the region at large. And of course, the British presence in Aden had repercussions which endured until the Aden Emergency and beyond.

A boundary between Yemen and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was first agreed in 1935 following a brief war between Ibn Saud and the Imam of Yemen, Imam Yahya. The war was fought over the border region of Asir, claimed by the Imamate but effectively under Saudi control (and arguably a dormant thorn in the flesh of contemporary Saudi/Yemeni relations.)

The subsequent peace agreement (signed in the coastal town of Taifa and hence “the Taifa Agreement”) delimited a boundary from Midi, a point on the shared coastline, to an oasis near the town of Najran, but left the boundary east of that point undelimited.

The Taifa Agreement was (and according to a clause within the treaty itself) renewed every 20 years – but not always with a great deal of ceremony. Relations between the two countries reflected and were driven by the plethora of ideological and economic factors which emerged within the peninsular in the 20th century (including Nasserism, the Soviet influence, and the discovery of oil in the KSA). But it was the emergence of “two Yemens,” and the cycle of war and rapprochement which dominated.

In the last decade of the 20th century, many of the contradictions in the Yemeni/Saudi relationship came to the fore – hinting that an agreed boundary would not be on the cards for decades to come. Yemen remained largely dependent on Saudi financial assistance and on remittances from the large Yemeni labour force in Saudi which was so sorely needed for that country's development, and relations plummeted after the Saudi government suspected Yemen of siding with Iraq after the latter's invasion of Kuwait – and some 880,000 Yemenis were returned across the border, many of whom would spend years in hastily erected camps for internally displaced persons.

Nonetheless, it became apparent that there existed a shared desire to resolve the border issue – strong enough even to survive a six month Yemeni civil war, border clashes around the Asir region, and a confrontation on the island of Duweimah in May 1998.

Each had strong reasons for resolving the issue. Terrorism had become a significant issue for Saudi Arabia and in order to securitize the border it was necessary to establish in international law its exact position. The Yemeni government was anxious to normalize relations with its wealthy northern neighbour in order that it might invest more heavily, and absorb some of the workers still displaced within Yemen. The need to clarify the position for the sake of interested oil companies, also played a role, as did the encouragement of the United States.

In 2000, the treaty was agreed by arbitration proceedings (during which Menas Associates and Richard Schofield were involved on behalf of Yemen), with the The International Boundary Treaty between Yemen and Saudi Arabia being signed June 12th.

The Treaty covers the entire Saudi-Yemeni maritime and land boundary “stretching from the tripoint of the Yemeni–Omani-Saudi land boundaries in the east to the tri-point of the Yemeni-Eritrean-Saudi maritime boundary in the Red Sea," dividing the maritime and land boundaries into three sectors, the first covering the border extending from the Red Sea coast at a land terminus “located at the quay of ras al-mu'waj…to the mountain jabar al-thar” (i.e., the line defined and largely demarcated in the Treaty of Taif), while a second sector refers to the area which had previously been undefined and runs from jabal al-thar to the intersection of the Saudi, Yemeni and Omani boundaries at 52 east longitude, 19 north latitude, while the third sector defines the maritime boundary in the Red Sea between Saudi, Eritrea and Yemen.

The subsequent decade has indeed seen an upturn in relations between the two countries – although immediate events subsequent to the agreement were not wholly without event. The border zone was and is only sparsely inhabited, however numerous and well-armed tribal groups took exception to the delimitation and to the imposition of nationality by a previously undecided boundary. And within a year of the signing, the government of Yemen was complaining that Saudi governments had literally over-stepped the mark in their creation of a “security wall,” in an attempt to reduce the incidence of gun smuggling. The Saudis subsequently scaled down their efforts, and tension subsided, although the relationship between Yemen and Saudi remains complex, and not without contradictions.