Yemen’s seven-year war has reached a hazardous tipping point, with civilian casualties in January reaching at least three-year highs and 8 million Yemenis at risk of losing all humanitarian aid next month unless urgent fresh finances are provided, according to U.N. officials on Tuesday.
U.N. special envoy Hans Grundberg and U.N. humanitarian director Martin Griffiths gave a bleak image of the Arab world’s poorest country. According to them, the preceding month saw a proliferation of fighting zones, and by the end of January, over two-thirds of key United Nations relief projects had been scaled back or closed.
Yemen has been at war since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels gained control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, forcing the government to evacuate to the south, then to Saudi Arabia. In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition, supported by the United States and the United Arab Emirates, entered the conflict to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.
Grundberg told the United Nations Security Council that recent Houthi strikes against the UAE and Saudi Arabia “show how this crisis risks escalating out of control unless substantial efforts are promptly made to terminate the conflict by Yemeni parties, the region, and the international community.”
He said that a coalition bombing on a detention centre in Houthi-controlled Saada was the “biggest civilian casualty incident in three years,” and he cited a “alarming” spike in airstrikes in Yemen, particularly on residential areas in Sanaa and the port region of Hodeida.
According to Griffiths, more than 650 civilians were killed or injured in January as a result of airstrikes, shelling, small weapons fire, and other forms of violence, the “greatest toll in at least three years.”
“The war finds people in their homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and other locations where civilians should be protected,” he explained. “On January 21, an attack on a prison facility in Saada killed or injured around 300 detainees.” Cross-border attacks have also increased, killing, wounding, and endangering civilians throughout the region.”
Neither Grundberg nor Griffiths saw any evidence of a resolution to the issue.
Grundberg stated that he will begin meetings next week with warring parties, political parties, civil society, and specialists on his plan to proceed toward a political settlement along three tracks — political, security, and economic — despite the Houthis’ refusal to invite him to Sanaa.
“Trust is low, and resolving this war would involve difficult compromises that neither warring party is currently ready to make,” he said.
“It is consequently incumbent upon all of us, including this council,” Grundberg stated, “to exert every possible effort to impress upon the parties to this dispute that there is no viable military solution.”
Yemen has long been regarded as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, possibly surpassed at the present by Afghanistan.
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