By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
For two and one half years, Yemen has been
torn by a civil war in which its internationally-recognized
government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by a
coalition supported by the United States and Great Britain, is
trying to roll back the Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels who
control most of northern Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.
The
Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 and
includes Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait,
Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan.
The Huthis belong to a branch of Shi’a
Islam and are allied with supporters of Yemen’s former
President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The anti-Huthi forces in the
Saudi Arabian-led coalition are mainly Sunni.
Today the country remains split between
Houthi-controlled territory in the west and land controlled by
the government and its Arab backers in the south and east.
Peace talks brokered by the United Nations have stalled, and
none of the warring parties has indicated much willingness to
back down.
As well, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
controls some of southern Yemen, including areas of Shabwa and
Hadhramaut provinces. Earlier this summer, a government
offensive in Shabwa, with help from United Arab Emirates and
American forces, has tried to drive the militants out.
The war against the Houthis has killed more
than 12,000 people, displaced more than three million and
ruined much of the impoverished country’s infrastructure. Public
and private services have all but disappeared.
Repeated bombings have crippled bridges,
hospitals and factories. The Saudi-led coalition has also kept
the international airport in Sana’a closed to civilian air
traffic for more than a year.
The fighting has left 20.7 million people
in need of humanitarian assistance, including 10.3 million who
require immediate help to save or sustain their lives. More
than 17 million people in Yemen, 60 per cent of its total
population, are currently food-insecure.
On July 2, the World Health Organization
reported a cholera outbreak in the country. It has killed more
than 2,000 people and infected 540,000, one of the world’s
largest outbreaks in the past 50 years.
Shortages in medicines and supplies are
persistent and widespread and 30,000 health workers, including
doctors, have not been paid salaries in nearly a year. There are
no doctors left in 49 out of 276 districts.
“Thousands of people are sick, but there
are not enough hospitals, not enough medicines, not enough
clean water,” stated WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus.
“With the malnutrition we have among
children, if they get diarrhea, they are not going to get
better,” remarked Meritxell Relano, the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Yemen.
Apart from disease, children are also being
killed by the bombing. Human Rights Watch released a study
Sept. 12 documenting the deaths of 26 children killed in five
airstrikes since June. The group said that despite promises by
the coalition to abide by international law, the airstrikes
have failed to do that.
“The Saudi-led coalition’s repeated
promises to conduct its air strikes lawfully are not sparing
Yemeni children from unlawful attacks,” stated Sarah Leah
Whitson, its Middle East director.
“Yemen is a humanitarian disaster of really
epic proportions,” added Human Rights Watch Executive Director
Kenneth Roth. “What is striking to me is the incongruity
between the severity of the disaster and the weakness of the
response by the UN Human Rights Council.”
Meanwhile, Canada and the Netherlands are
spearheading a bid to push a resolution through the UN Human
Rights Council this month on creating an International
Commission of Inquiry to investigate abuses in Yemen.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has urged it to order such a probe.
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