Yemen

The UN Special Envoy for Yemen announced on Monday the planned release of 887 conflict-related detainees from all sides along with other gains after concluding 10 days of negotiations to address the devastating eight-year-old conflict.

With the holy month of Ramadan fast approaching, warring parties in Yemen must build on relative calm across the country and the April 2022 truce – which is largely holding, despite its official lapse in October – to negotiate a nationwide ceasefire and address the dire humanitarian needs there, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday.

The Yemen talks began a day after Iran and Saudi Arabia announced a deal to re-establish diplomatic ties.

Amid Yemen’s longest-ever pause in fighting — more than nine months — Saudi Arabia and its rival, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, have revived back-channel talks, according to Yemeni, Saudi and U.N. officials. The two sides hope to strengthen the informal cease-fire and lay out a path for a negotiated end to the long civil war.

Warring parties in Yemen should take advantage of the current absence of major fighting and use it to advance their talks towards peace, the top UN official in the country said on Monday in his latest briefing to the Security Council. 

After nearly eight years of war in Yemen, talks are under way between the Huthi rebels and Saudi Arabia. Yet, by themselves, these discussions cannot bring hostilities to a close. The UN should begin laying the groundwork for negotiations that include all the conflict parties.

During this past year, a cease-fire gave ordinary Yemenis some respite from violence. But warring parties did not extend their agreement and 2023 is likely to hold more violence and humanitarian disaster for the country.

More than 11,000 boys and girls have been killed or injured in the war in Yemen - an average of four a day since fighting escalated in 2015, though the number is likely to be far higher, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported.

UN Security Council members urged Yemen's Houthi rebels to renew a truce that expired in October and to engage in substantive talks to end the more than eight-year-old conflict.

[…] The truce, in effect since April 2 and extended on an emergency basis twice, expired on October 2 without the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels reaching an agreement to roll it over for another six months.