Conflicts and war have markedly changed Yemen’s landscape, generating a new set of priorities for its population, whose coping capacity is constantly under pressure against new challenges. Yemen’s development partners face now an extremely difficult and changing strategic and operational environment in the country. Hence, it becomes imperative to have a collective reflection on the mistakes and lessons learned from the failures of the past on one hand, build on those lessons to design a responsive and efficient assistance program on the other hand, identifying priorities from a humanitarian, economic and developmental perspective. This reflection needs to be carried out primarily amongst Yemeni stakeholders, despite absence of a unified national government and uncertainty regarding a political settlement, in addition to weak prospects for a capable and visionary future governments to lead the recovery and reconstruction era. This publication will provide a concise and original analysis from a political economy prospective that will shed light on the interplay between political, economic and social factors that contributed to the breakdown of the state in 2011 and to the unsuccessful transition process.