Yemen: 2017 in Review

A displaced woman (Malkah Ahmed Saleh) with her daughters sitting at their
temporary home (camp). (Photo: UNICEF/Moohi Al-Zikri)

*A U.N. official warned days ago that, “Yemen could be the worst humanitarian crisis in 50 years.” As 2018 begins, these words reflect the increasingly deteriorating unspeakable human suffering in Yemen, after the UN had been calling Yemen throughout last year as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

The poorest Arab nation with a population of around 25 million has been sent into destitution after nearly four years of war. 2017 has been a year of utter despair in light of countless human rights atrocities committed on multi-fronts; from the Saudi-led coalition to Saleh-Houthis’ forces and the U.S. counter-terrorism military operation, all sharing responsibility for creating unspeakable human suffering in Yemen. However, the killing of Saleh at the end of 2017 marks a historical transition that’s going to drastically change Yemen’s political map for years to come.


Human Suffering


Saleh’s violent death gives a glimpse into the gruesomeness of this war. Both combatants and noncombatant innocent civilians are caught up in the violence. While Houthis’ (and Saleh’s for a certain time, until his death) forces in Taiz continued their indiscriminate shelling or, as described by the UN Human Rights Office, the “unrelenting shelling,” against civilian inhabited areas for about three years, resulting in a terrible death toll, the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes since 2015 did not cease to hit non-military populated areas across many parts of Yemen. In 2017, markets, a migrant boat, a local inhabited hotel, among many other non-military targets were hit. The glaring example last year, however, was the story of the five-year-old Bouthina who survived an attack in August by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes hitting an apartment building in Sana’a, killing all her family.

The Yemen Data Project reveals that since 2015 nearly one-third of Saudi air raids hit non-military sites in Yemen. To rub salt into the wound, 2017, in particular, was when more US strikes hit Yemen than the past four years combined, with 125 strikes, under the U.S. war-on-terror military operations. Another glaring example of that was the U.S. Special forces’ first raid in Yemen’s al-Baydah province under U.S. president, Donald Trump, end of January 2017, killing dozens of women and children.

In parallel, Yemenis face a humanitarian catastrophe as the country's infrastructure is almost totally destroyed and humanitarian operations don’t have full access to some of the hardest hit communities in Yemen, following the Saudi-led coalition imposing a siege, in retaliation to a Houthi-fired missile hitting close to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh airport in November. Despite progress in Saudis promising to open Houdaidah port and letting Aden port open, the humanitarian situation seems to be only worsening, proven by the UN’s recent announcement of the largest-ever emergency relief allocation - $50 million for UN aid-operations to come forward in 2018. This doesn’t reflect a success but rather an indication of how desperate the humanitarian situation is.

The current number of reported civilian casualties seems illogical given the conflicting reports from the U.N. that are not matching the scale of human suffering on the ground. More than a year ago, a UN official revealed that 10,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen but another recent UN report claimed that only 5,000 civilians have been killed since March 2015. As widespread famine threatens millions of lives, there is a new outbreak of disease, diphtheria, in addition to cholera; that’s probably the worst outbreak the world has ever seen, ripping more than 2,000 lives and reaching one million suspect cases. Also, UNICEF has been reporting since the beginning of 2017 that every 10 minutes a child dies in Yemen. In a situation like this, looking like the apocalypse, reports failed to match the real death toll throughout 2017.

While Yemenis are still counting the dead, the only slight of progress ever made in September 2017 was the establishment of an independent investigation committee by the UN Human Rights Council into the war crimes, thanks to great pressure and advocacy work done by international and local Yemeni Human Rights organizations since 2015. This is significant because campaigning clearly pays off and local and international civil society efforts in Yemen do matter. Nonetheless, the committee is due to begin its work later this year.



Yemen without Saleh


By December 2017, a political earthquake was to hit Yemen. Saleh’s death at the hands of the Houthis marked a violent end for an era and a defining point in Yemen’s political map. As ensuing days warring parties’ military operations intensified, Saleh’s death posed two critical aspects. One is that, whether Saleh genuinely desired to initiate negotiations away from Houthis or him forseeing the deadly path of his alliance with the Houthis, it’s confirmed today that Houthis’ politics are driven by violence.

The other aspect is, in spite of Houthis’ violent politics, Saleh’s absence has created for the first time in the course of Yemen’s nearly four years of war, one single centralized power in the north part of Yemen; that’s in the hands of the Houthis. Now more than ever, there has to be a regional and international political will to face this centralized power, reinvent a political solution and resolve the conflict.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen as in 2017 alone, both key international allies to Saudi Arabia; the US and the UK have found Yemen's war to be a lucrative business, profiting massively from the financial rewards of their arms sales to Saudi Arabia. With a tragic optimism, let us hope 2018 would bring the political will to end the Yemen war.

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*This article was first written for and published in Open Democracy, January 8, 2018. 

Yemen needs united nations, not the United Nations

In front of the UNHRC building in Geneva (MEE/Afrah Nasser)

GENEVA – When I told my friends and family in Yemen that I was going to attend the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) again, they scolded me.

Three years after our long war started – and my fourth trip to a UNHRC session – there is a growing sense of resentment and distrust among Yemenis towards the UN over its inaction in dealing with the crisis in our country.

The main cause of that distrust is the sense that the UN submits to whatever Saudi Arabia and its allies want to see - or not see - in Yemen.

While war crimes have been committed in Yemen by all warring sides, the HRC, under Saudi Arabia and its allies’ influence, has failed to establish an international independent inquiry commission into these incidents.

A brief recap: In October 2015, under intense pressure from Saudi Arabia and with insufficient support from the US and the UK, a Dutch-led draft resolution to create an independent commission was abandoned at the UNHRC, six months after the Saudi-led campaign in the country began.

Instead, the council passed another resolution allowing the creation of a national inquiry body led by Saudi Arabia and Riyadh-based Yemeni government which became the National Committee to Investigate Allegations of Human Rights Violations.

Since then, while the committee is supposed to investigate and document human rights violations, it has yet to produce any significant reports and, from my perspective, is completely biased, focusing on Houthi human rights violations, not on those of the Saudi-led coalition.


In 2016, Saudi Arabia’s ally, Britain blocked another call to establish an independent international inquiry, reflecting just how heavily powerful UN member states and their allies influence the council.

Now the battle continues at the HRC’s 36th session which opened earlier this month. Member states will have an opportunity, yet again, to decide whether the UN should establish an independent inquiry.

Hustle and bustle

Following calls from 67 human rights organisations for the establishment of a UN inquiry mission into Yemen war crimes, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein also renewed his call for an international investigation.

“The minimal efforts made toward accountability over the past year are insufficient to respond to the gravity of the continuing and daily violations involved in this conflict,” Zeid said in a speech at the opening of the council’s session.

As the council got underway the bustling UNHRC hall, I talked to Mona Sabella, a UN advocacy officer with the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, one of the organisations that signed the petition.

“This session is more crucial than previous years because the Netherlands has gotten more support from other members like Canada, Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium,” she said.

Sabella said she expected two rival draft resolutions to vie for support: a Dutch-led resolution for an international inquiry body and a Saudi-Egyptian-led resolution for another national inquiry body.

“And we, along with other human rights advocacy groups are working really hard to convince state members for the Dutch-led resolution to be espoused this time,” Sabella added.

As I finish my interview with Sabella, I head to the other side of the hall to meet people from Yemen's National Committee to Investigate Allegations of Human Rights Violations. Huda al-Sarai, a member of the group, suggests that, although some have criticised the committee for its lack of impartiality, that’s not the reason it has been ineffective.

“Our work is undermined by the deactivated justice system and I believe no international inquiry body could achieve any success as long as the war is raging and we lack rule of law," she said.

Nearby, Abdulrasheed al-Faqih, executive director with the Sanaa-based Mwatana Organisation for Human Rights, agrees with al-Sarai that Yemen is insecure and that the judicial system is frozen – but that’s exactly why, he says, an international inquiry is needed.

“Warring parties and armed groups in Yemen operate while not obliged with any legal considerations,” he said, “and this is why we need to uphold them accountable by international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Enforcing accountability won’t end the war in Yemen immediately, many of the people I talked to acknowledged, but it will stir the path to it.

An international inquiry, Kristine Beckerle, the Yemen and UAE researcher at Human Rights Watch, tells me, will “ensure the global community has to reckon with what this war has meant for Yemenis across the country, and, ideally, inspire states to finally take the action needed to make sure these violations stop”.

Futile battle

I left Geneva with a sense of a tragic hope. I appreciate the efforts of the human rights groups, but justice for Yemen is threatened by Saudi Arabia’s hegemony at this council and other top UN bodies.

A series of previous events have demonstrated how the final say in establishing the UN Yemen inquiry is at the hands of the Saudis.

Even this time, at the beginning of the ongoing session, the Saudi representative to the council rejected calls for the inquiry, saying the time wasn’t right. Given the past attempts to establish an inquiry, this doesn’t bode well.

For me, it is a futile battle - human rights groups wanting to stand up for Yemeni civilians versus Saudi Arabia’s great power at the UNHRC.

The resolutions that have come out of the council are a reflection of how member states view human rights problems and, clearly, Saudi Arabia and its allies view war crimes in Yemen without much concern at all.

The way these countries wield power at the UNHRC, I can only wish the human rights groups the best of luck.

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*My dispatch to Middle East Eye from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, September 25th, 2017.