Eric Jeunot

Eric Jeunot is reviewing the role that domestic tribal norms played in the settlement of interstate territorial and boundary conflicts.

Profile

PhD Focus: The role of domestic tribal norms in the settlement of interstate territorial conflict and international boundary agreement. A review of the Saudi-Yemen territorial conflicts in the 20^th century.

Using a normative analytical framework, Eric’s research explores what role domestic tribal norms played in the settlement of the territorial and boundary conflicts between the Yemen and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the 20^th century. His research considers the role of domestic tribal norms of honour, group cohesion, and mediation exercised at the interstate level as key explanatory factors to understanding the Saudi-Yemen territorial conflicts and their settlements.
Rational behaviours and state-centred decisions are identified as the primary explanatory factors to make sense of the settlements of interstate territorial and boundary conflicts. While research focus on the international norm of the right of conquest and the norm against conquest to make sense of the settlements of interstate territorial conflicts, they overlook the role of domestic norms. The Saudi-Yemen territorial and boundary conflicts during the 20^th century provide the case studies to review how three particular domestic tribal norms played a role in the settlement of their conflicts. The tribal social norm of honour, behavioural norm of asabiyyah (group cohesion), and legal norm of al-sulh (mediation) are applied to make sense of the Saudi-Yemen territorial and boundary conflicts over the ʿAsīr region and the processes of the 1934 and 2000 treaties of Ta’if and Jeddah to settling their conflicts and demarcating their international border.
More than 10 years working as a humanitarian country and project coordinator in Yemen and the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia), living and working with tribal societies and governance, provided Eric the experience to further academic research related to the Yemen and Arabian Peninsula historical and contemporary tribe-state dyad. He is interested in the intersection of Arabian tribes and state in the historical and contemporary Yemen’s international relations with other states of the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa.

Author of “Why Do we Keep Misunderstanding Yemen”: https://www.diplosphere.org/post/yemen

Eric is a member of the Middle East & Islamic Studies Aotearoa (MEISA) research network.

Supervisors

Publications

Why Do we Keep Misunderstanding Yemen (2021)