UN claims Arab rulers may have committed war crimes in Yemen
● Experts urge foreign countries not to provide arms for use in conflict
Three experts working for the UN’S top human rights body say the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia may have been responsible for war crimes including rape, torture, disappearances and “deprivation of the right to life” during three years of escalated fighting against rebels in Yemen.
In their first report for the Human Rights Council, the experts pointed to possible crimes by rebel Houthi Shiite militia in Yemen, who have been fighting the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen’s government in a civil war since March 2015.
The experts have also chronicled the damages from coalition airstrikes – the single most lethal force in the fighting – over the past year.
They urged the international community to “refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict” – an apparent reference to countries including the US and Britain that help arm the Saudi-led coalition, as well as Iran, which the coalition has accused of arming the Houthis. The experts visited some, but not all parts of Yemen as they compiled the report.
The report said: “[We have] reasonable grounds to believe that the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are responsible for human rights violations.” The document cited violations, including unlawful “deprivation of the right to life,” arbitrary detention, rape, torture, enforced disappearances and child recruitment.
Saudi, Emirati and Yemen officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday. On Twitter, Emirati minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash wrote the UAE “must review it, answer its merits and review what it says about the horrors of the Houthis”.
Saudi state media later said its coalition had received the UN report and forwarded it onto its own lawyers to review before it “will take the appropriate position”.
It was reported last year the UAE and its allied militias were running a network of secret detention facilities beyond the control of the Yemeni government.
The UN report accused the “de facto authorities” – a reference to rebel leaders that control some of the country’s most populated western and northern areas – of crimes, includcate ing arbitrary detentions, torture and child recruitment. Human rights advocates have faulted the Houthis for laying land mines and targeting religious minorities and imprisoned opponents.
Kamel Jendoubi, a Tunisian human rights advocate who chaired the group of experts, said they compiled a “confidential list” of people suspected of committing international crimes, which was being handed over to the office of the UN human rights chief yesterday. His team refused to indi- how many or which people or groups were on the list. Mr Jendoubi said: “Despite the gravity of the situation, we still note a total disdain for the suffering of the Yemeni people.
“This crisis reached its peak with light appearing at the end of the tunnel. This conflict has, in effect, fallen into the void.”
Since March last year, the UN’S humanitarian aid agency has said Yemen is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The report said three fourths of its population of more than 29 million needed humanitarian assistance. The war has devastated the country’s health system and provided the breeding grounds for the world’s largest cholera outbreak last year.
The experts cited some 6,475 deaths from the conflict between March 2015 and June this year, but said the “real figure is likely to be significantly higher”.
The experts said nearly a dozen deadly airstrikes investigated over the past year “raise serious questions about the targeting process applied by the coalition”.