UN to Expand War Crimes Investigation in Yemen

By Noah Clarke

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently decided in a 21-8 decision to extend its war crimes investigation into the war in Yemen, according to U.S. News & World Report. This decision has angered Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states, reports Al Jazeera. Yemen has been at the center of a war crimes investigation for roughly the past year, with three parties drawing intense scrutiny: the Saudi Arabian government for its indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the Yemeni government for its human rights abuses, and the opposition Houthi rebels, who were also accused of human rights violations.


Mohamad Bazzi of the Atlantic states that the Yemeni Civil War broke-out in September 2014 when Houthi rebels overran the capital of Sana’a and forced President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and most of his government to flee to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia feared having a Shia-governed country to its south and claimed that the rebels were being bankrolled by Iran, the regional Shia rival of Sunni Saudi Arabia. In 2015, Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states intervened militarily and launched a massive bombing campaign against the Houthis.


Bazzi reported that the Armed Conflict Location and Event Project estimated that 50,000 people have been killed between January 2016 and July 2018. Casualties may be higher, as the United Nations stopped counting after deaths reached 10,000 over two years ago. Much of the world’s focus has been on the indiscriminate bombing from Saudi warplanes, which has killed innocent men, women, and children. The Saudis launched an airstrike on a school bus on August 9 that killed 51 children. The Saudi government announced an investigation after receiving swift international condemnation, and even a government probe called the attack “unjustified,” according to Al Jazeera. The UNHRC investigation extension was called for after a damning August 28 report accused all sides of committing possible war crimes. Saudi Arabia in particular was blamed for most of these deaths, either due to its bombing campaign or its air and naval blockade of Yemen.


As a result of the UN war crimes report and the extension of the investigation, Saudi Arabia and Yemen forcefully defended themselves. Arab News reported that Yemen discontinued the mandate for UN experts to investigate war crimes after the report’s release, saying that the UN had not been impartial in its investigation and had been “turning a blind eye” to violations committed by the Houthis. According to Gulf News, Saudi Arabia and the its main ally in the air campaign, the United Arab Emirates, said that any decision on continuing the investigation should have been made by Yemen, while also discounting the report for not reflecting the role that Iran had been playing.


Currently, there have been no signs that the conflict in Yemen will abate or that a peace agreement will be reached between the warring parties. It has yet to be seen if the report and investigation extension will bring any sense of closure and justice to those affected by the tragic war, and there is no clear indication that these dual blows to the military intervention will change Saudi Arabia’s methods.