Whats Going on in Yemen?
- Brooke Beau
- Jun 18, 2020
- 5 min read
Yemen is facing a major humanitarian crisis. Children and families have been left in urgent need of food, water and medical supplies with currently 1.71 million children internally displaced. No place in Yemen is safe for children.
To put this into perspective, If Yemen which is 30.5million people was 100 people...
80 need aid to survive
60 have no food
58 have no access to clean water
52 have no access to healthcare and since Covid-19 the healthcare system has collapsed
To understand what is happening it is prevalent to see where this all started. In November 2011, following the Arab spring, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to step down to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. The reigning presidency was unstable and under Hadi’s presidency, Yemen struggled with militant attacks, corruption, food instability and strong loyalties to the previous president. In 2014 Houthi forces capitalised on the president's weakness and took control of the capital Sana’a. In March 2015 Saudi Arabia and its allies launched airstrikes to help restore Hadi’s presidency. Houthi forces still currently control the capital and allied with forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have clashed with the forces loyal to Hadi who are based in Aden. This has given rise to the current humanitarian crisis.
80% of Yemen’s population are in need of humanitarian aid and protection.
UNICEF is concerned that the spread of coronavirus in Yemen is likely to be devastating.
2 million children are acutely malnourished and urgently need life-saving food to survive. Only one in three people have access to running water, very few people have soap, and many healthcare facilities are closed or only able to provide a very basic service. Any outbreak will place even greater demands on medical staff and already scarce hospital resources such as gloves, soap and ventilators. The healthcare system has consequently collapsed and millions are at risk of starvation, the UN states that 22.2 million people (75% of the population) are in need of humanitarian assistance.
According to the Yemen Data Project, more than 17,500 civilians were killed and injured since 2015, and a quarter of all civilians killed in air raids were women and children. More than 20 million people in Yemen are experiencing food insecurity; 10 million of them are at risk of famine. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 90 apparent unlawful Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, including deadly attacks on Yemeni fishing boats that have killed dozens and appeared to be deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects in violation of the laws of war. The Houthis have continued to impose severe movement restrictions, including the flow of aid, into Yemen’s third largest city, Taizz, which has had a devastating impact on the local residents. Since 2015, the fight for control of Taizz between the Houthis and other armed groups has led to indiscriminate shelling and attacks against civilian areas. The UN has accused the Houthis of stealing UN food aid in some areas controlled by the Houthi-authorities, and it promised to investigate corruption in its own agencies in the Yemen aid effort.
The Saudi-led coalition’s restrictions on imports have worsened the dire humanitarian situation. The coalition has delayed and diverted fuel tankers, closed critical ports, and stopped goods from entering Houthi-controlled seaports. Fuel needed to power generators to hospitals and pump water to homes has also been blocked. Since May 2017, journalists and international human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, have been facing restrictions by the Saudi-led coalition in using UN flights to areas of Yemen under Houthi control. The coalition has kept Sanaa International Airport closed since August 2016.
Prior to the conflict, women in Yemen faced severe discrimination in law and practice. Warring parties’ actions have exacerbated discrimination and violence against women and girls. Parties to the conflict have accused women of prostitution, promiscuity, and immorality using derogatory terms as part of their public threats and harassment against opponents. This increases risks of domestic violence, dissuades women and girls from movement outside the home, and seriously inhibits their participation in the economic and political spheres. There is no minimum age of marriage and child marriage, which was prevalent in Yemen before the conflict, has increased according to UNICEF. Women, like men, have also faced torture and sexual violence during detention, according to the September report by the UN Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts, which verified 12 cases of sexual violence on five women, six men and a 17-year-old boy. Victims of sexual violence in Yemen are highly stigmatised, meaning vast underreporting is likely and violence against women has increased 63 percent since the conflict escalated, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
Arms sales to the warring parties continue from Western countries such as the US, France, Canada, and others who risk complicity in war crimes and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. In September, a UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen stated that “The parties to the conflict in Yemen are responsible for an array of human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law. Some of these violations are likely to amount to war crimes.” The UN Group of Eminent Experts in September stated that several world powers, including the US, the UK, and France, may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen through arms sales and intelligence support given to the Saudi-led coalition. Despite mounting evidence of violations of international law by the parties to the conflict, efforts toward accountability have been inadequate. However, on June 2o, 2019, the UK government agreed to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the UK Court of Appeal in London ruled that the government’s refusal to consider Saudi Arabia’s laws-of-war violations in Yemen before licensing arms sales was unlawful. The ruling requires the UK government to reconsider its decision on arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The UK is appealing the court decision.
Despite multiple congressional efforts in the US to end US arms sales to Saudi Arabia that could be used unlawfully in Yemen, President Donald Trump used his veto power to block such efforts and continued his support to Saudi Arabia, American’s largest weapons buyer. As well as this, France is under pressure to stop its arms sales to members of the Saudi-led coalition after a surge in its sales to Saudi Arabia. The parties have failed to acknowledge any responsibility for violations and refuse to take any meaningful steps to remedy the situations in which they occur. This has resulted in a pervasive lack of accountability, which heightens disregard for the protection of the Yemeni population and foments a climate of impunity.
A positive step was the extension of the mandate of war crimes investigators in Yemen by the UN Human Rights Council in September after the group found evidence of grave violations by all sides in the conflict. But this is not enough to help the people of Yemen, here are some ways that you can make a difference. Yemen is desperate for financial aid but if it's not possible for you to donate make sure you share posts but also engage with meaningful content, sign petitions and write to your local MP to vocalise your concerns on the crisis - www.writetothem.com
Donations:
Unicef, Red Cross and Save the Children are large charities which are on the ground in Yemen:
£5 could help provide 28 bars of soap to help prevent the spread of disease.
£11 could provide life-saving food for a child for a week
£15 could provide exercise books for a class of 50 children to help them continue their education in times of crisis.
Unicef:
Red Cross:
Save the Children:
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/where-we-work/middle-east/yemen
You can also donate direct to the UN:
Petitions:
Sign this petition and help us ask everyone to put down their weapons and let humanitarian help be delivered.
Force House Vote on Saudi War in Yemen to Stop Cholera & Famine.
Start a movement across the globe to end this inhumane treatment.
Justice for Yemen
https://www.change.org/p/muslim-aid-justice-for-yemen?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_22540885_en-GB%3Av2&recruiter=1104217690&recruited_by_id=ee139c80-a554-11ea-a36a-a97d2cdd7da1&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&utm_term=psf_combo_share_abi
WFP needs the support of the international community to help Yemen through a hunger crisis ravaging the entire country.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/endhungerinYemen/
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