Human Rights Council Ignores Crimes of US-Saudi Aggression in Yemen

Saudi Arabia, with the support of the United States, succeeded in pushing to end the mandate of the international team of experts to investigate war crimes and human rights violations in Yemen before the end of the aggression.

The intense pressure campaign led by Riyadh at the United Nations Human Rights Council, for weeks, resulted in the rejection of a resolution led by the Netherlands to give the independent investigators another two years to monitor atrocities in Yemen’s conflict.

China joined, for the first time, the group of Arab countries refusing to extend the mission of the expert group. The results of the vote led to wide resentment among Yemeni and international human rights defenders.

Human rights defenders in Sana’a described it as “a disgrace in the history of the Human Rights Council, which has lost its integrity and credibility in dealing with the Yemeni issue, granting the countries of aggression impunity.”

The cessation of the mission of the Group of Eminent Experts coincided with the 5th anniversary of the funeral hall massacre, which Riyadh admitted to committing after failing to deny responsibility for it. It is the crime that is considered the largest among 250 massacres documented by local and international bodies concerned with defending human rights in Yemen.

Ministry of Human Rights in Sana’a denounced the Human Rights Council’s abandonment of its humanitarian duties towards the Yemeni people. It indicated that it followed with interest the course of the meeting of the Human Rights Council in its 48th session, which completely neglected the war crimes against humanity committed by the US-Sadi aggression in Yemen.

In its statement, the Ministry pointed out that among the most prominent of these crimes and violations is the targeting of children in many areas and the targeting of population centers, such as funerals, wedding halls, farms, warehouses, tankers, food factories, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, health centers, communication networks, electricity and others.

It also condemned the negligent actions of the UN Group of Experts formed by the council, the Group’s failure to assume its full responsibilities and often yielding to the pressures of the countries of coalition on the Yemeni people.

For its part, Amnesty International considered the refusal to extend the experts’ mission as “a flagrant international abandonment of the Yemeni people, and a green light for all parties to the conflict to continue violations”.

It stressed that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and their allies have devoted all their energies to defeating the only international investigative mechanism in Yemen. It warned that “stopping the Group of Eminent Experts will not lead to concealment of violations, and will not put an end to the urgent humanitarian needs of civilians, or the work of human rights defenders.