The United Nations
top human rights official called on Thursday for an international
inquiry into possible war crimes and other accusations of abuses in Yemen, reviving a proposal that Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government it supports have fiercely resisted.
Other
nations have “a legal and moral duty” to act, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein,
the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a
statement released with a report by investigators that will almost
certainly anger the Saudi authorities.
The report documented attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure during 18 months of conflict
between Saudi-led coalition forces supporting Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi,
the ousted president, and forces aligned with Iranian-backed Houthi
rebels.
Those
responsible for violations and abuses against civilians enjoy impunity
in Yemen, Mr. al-Hussein said, adding that “such a manifestly,
protractedly unjust situation must no longer be tolerated by the
international community.”
The
report and Mr. al-Hussein’s recommendation will be presented to the
Human Rights Council next month; there was no immediate comment from the
Saudi representatives in Geneva.
Although
the report details accusations of abuses by all parties to the conflict
in Yemen, much of the focus will be on Saudi Arabia, which is the
subject of mounting international criticism over the heavy toll from
repeated airstrikes on civilian targets. A rocket attack last week killed 19 people in a hospital run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.
At
least 3,799 civilians have been killed, and 6,711 wounded since
fighting flared in March 2015, Mr. al-Hussein said, emphasizing the
heavy humanitarian toll from the war in a one of the world’s poorest
nations. In a country of 24 million people, 2.4 million have fled their
homes, and 7.6 million are suffering from malnutrition, he said.
The
report released on Thursday showed that 60 percent of the civilian
deaths documented in a one-year period resulted from airstrikes carried
out by the Saudi-led coalition on weddings, markets, schools and
hospitals. In several of those attacks, the United Nations said it was
unable to identify any possible military target.
Last year, Saudi Arabia successfully lobbied hard to block a resolution in the Human Rights Council that would have established an international commission of inquiry.
The
United States and other Western allies of Saudi Arabia backed off from
that resolution after Yemen’s government, which was in exile at the
time, agreed to begin a national inquiry.
Mr.
al-Hussein’s office said it had provided training and technical support
to the national body but had concluded that it had not worked to
international standards. Its members lacked access to parts of the
country and a report they submitted focused largely on accusations of
abuses by the Houthis.
The
36-page report released by the United Nations on Thursday also
documented abuses by the Houthis and forces aligned with them.
The investigators cited several deadly episodes,
including a July 2015 attack on a residential area of the southern port
city of Aden that killed 107 civilians, and rocket attacks in the city
of Taiz in June that killed 18 civilians, which were attributed to the
Houthis and their allies. They also reported numerous attacks on
journalists and efforts by Houthi authorities to close down news
websites and intimidate opposition politicians.
The
United Nations also detailed heavy civilian casualties from airstrikes
by the Saudi-led coalition, continuing a reporting process that has
infuriated Saudi officials.
The
Saudi government has accused the United Nations of bias and of ignoring
Houthi violations, and the 29-person team of United Nations human
rights investigators working in Yemen has been denounced in
Arabic-language news outlets and on social media.
Personal
attacks have eased in recent months, but they continue on social media
and “put our colleagues in the field in great danger,” said Mohammad Ali
Alnsour, chief of the United Nations rights office’s Middle East
section.
The report also cited the use of cluster munitions
by coalition forces in residential areas, a delicate issue for the
United States and Britain, which have supplied billions of dollars of
arms and munitions to Saudi Arabia and which have worked with the
coalition on its targeting.
“The
resilience of the Yemeni people has been stretched beyond human
limits,” the report said. Other nations had “a legal and moral duty to
take urgent steps to alleviate the appalling levels of human despair”
and to ensure accountability for abuses.
