On Friday, September 29, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council mandated the establishment of an international group of experts to lead an independent investigation of all alleged abuses of human rights committed by all parties to the civil war in Yemen since September 2014. According to the resolution, the designated group of experts, after being appointed by United Nations high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, will head to Yemen immediately and will be expected to gather their evidence, including the identification of anyone deemed responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes since September 2014, and present such evidence to the Human Rights Council a year from now.
For many Yemeni human rights organizations as well as international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the adopted resolution is long overdue, and was agreed upon this year largely because of the deterioration of conditions in Yemen, now described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with seven million people verging on famine and a national cholera epidemic that is projected to affect nearly a million people by year’s end. Prior to the adoption of the recent UN resolution, there was a dearth of institutional measures to investigate abuses committed by all parties to the conflict, with the only notable investigative body being a Yemeni national human rights commission – a body widely considered by human rights groups as ineffective due in part to its close relationship with Saudi Arabia, one of the warring parties to the Yemen conflict.
Background to the Yemen conflict
To grasp why the recently adopted UN resolution matters entails an analysis of the civil war in Yemen and an examination of the extent of the damage and destruction that all parties to the conflict have wreaked over the past three years. The key participants of this conflict are the Houthis, a Shiite rebel group linked to Iran and the Sunni government of Yemen. These two factions have actually engaged in conflict periodically since 2004; before September 2014, however, much of the fighting was confined to the Houthis' stronghold in northern Yemen's Saada province.
The territorial conflict morphed into a full-fledged civil war in September 2014, when the Houthis, with assistance from some factions of the Yemeni military, demanded a new government and launched an insurgency which eventually took control of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, before pushing southwards towards the country's second-biggest city, Aden. In response to the Houthis' advances, in March 2015, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states launched a military campaign aimed at repelling the Houthis and restoring the ousted Yemeni government, which was forced into exile in January 2015. The Houthi insurgency and Saudi-led coalition’s counter-campaign has ultimately devolved into a highly destructive stalemate between both sides, with Yemen resultantly fragmented between Houthi-controlled territory in the north and west and land controlled by the Yemeni government and its Arab backers in the south and east.
The most recent attempt by the United Nations to broker peace talks between the Houthi rebels and the government of Yemen collapsed in the summer of 2016; even worse, the stalling of such talks triggered an escalation of the conflict that the UN said resulted in a further uptick of civilian casualties. Regarding the extent of death and devastation wreaked by the warring parties, one could feasibly write a ten page report documenting the human, political and economic cost of the civil war in Yemen.
Airstrikes, mainly launched from the Saudi-led coalition, have resulted in mass civilian casualties and the destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure; of note, the airstrikes’ destruction of sanitation stations played a key role in facilitating a fertile environment for the subsequent cholera outbreak. In January 2017, the United Nations reported that civilian casualties had reached ten thousand with at least 42,000 civilians wounded; while Saudi-led coalition air strikes have reportedly caused between sixty percent and two-thirds of recorded civilian deaths, both sides have been accused of causing mass civilian casualties, with the Houthis accused of mass abductions and killings during their ongoing siege of Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated in February 2016 that internally displaced Yemenis amounted to at least 2.4 million, with 120,000 Yemenis reported to have sought asylum in other countries, including Djibouti and Somalia; both figures have presumably risen since those estimates were recorded.
Potential Ramifications of the Adopted UN Resolution
The final version of the adopted UN resolution was produced from compromise, between Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Arab League and Western countries, particularly the Netherlands, Canada and France. While Western countries advocated for a formal commission of inquiry on human rights conducted by the UN Human Rights Council, as had been mandated on Syria in 2011, Saudi Arabia and its allies called for the United Nations to provide international experts to support Yemen’s national commission. In retrospect, the compromise provided concessions to the Western countries in that an independent investigation conducted by a group of "eminent international and regional experts" was agreed to, while Saudi Arabia was able to negotiate for the avoidance of a full-scale UN commission of inquiry. It is important to note that it was in Saudi Arabia’s interests to fend off a full-scale commission of inquiry by the UN Human Rights Council, as such commissions can lead to referrals of individuals to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the court of last resort for prosecuting those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. While the agreed-to independent investigation can identify, where possible, those alleged to have committed human rights abuses and war crimes in Yemen since September 2014, going from identifying those responsible to referring such individuals to the ICC will likely require another, potentially even more contentiously debated UN resolution.
Regarding other ramifications of the resolution, it will be interesting to see if the launch of this investigation will have a deterrent effect on Western powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom, as both western powers have supplied the Saudi-led coalition with weapons and intelligence. For the United Kingdom, reports have arisen that British-made cluster bombs have been weaponized by Saudi Arabia in Yemen; the use of such bombs has been criticized due to the threat they pose to civilians. The United States has partnered with the Saudi-led coalition to combat terrorist and insurgent groups in Yemen such as the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is considered to be one of the most dangerous al-Qaeda affiliates to U.S. national security, and more recently, the Islamic State (ISIS), which has carried out attacks targeting Houthi rebels and Shiite civilians in Sanaa. Human rights groups have recently alleged, however, that US-manufactured bombs have been used in Saudi-led airstrikes, including two airstrikes on a funeral hall in Sanaa in October 2016 that left at least 140 civilians dead and over 550 wounded. The last thing either the United States or United Kingdom want is an independent investigation under UN auspices finding potentially damaging links between US and UK-manufactured arms and civilian injuries and casualties in Yemen; only time will tell regarding whether this unwanted result prompts the United States and United Kingdom to dramatically lessen their assistance and provision of arms to the Saudi-led coalition.
Conclusion
In sum, the UN Human Rights Council’s recent resolution mandating the launch of an independent, impartial and transparent investigation with the potential to comprehensively examine the facts and circumstances surrounding human rights violations and war crimes in Yemen since September 2014 is a belated but necessary step towards ensuring justice and accountability in Yemen. Still, we should temper our expectations regarding any far-reaching implications of the resolution, such as potential referrals of individuals to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. It will be interesting to see, however, the deterrent effects of the launching of an independent investigation under UN auspices, not only on the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels but also on other countries involved in the civil war such as the United States and United Kingdom.