Jemen

On 10 January, the former United States Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, announced the designation of the Houthis (Ansar Allah) as a foreign terrorist organization and a specially designated global terrorist entity. The designation entered into effect on 19 January.

Civilians in Yemen’s Hudaydah Governorate, face a growing threat from escalating clashes, with shelling of residential areas ongoing, endangering thousands.

Yemen’s warring sides Sunday resumed United Nations-backed negotiations over a prisoner swap, the world body said, more than three months after they completed the war’s largest exchange. …

Aid agencies are urging the incoming Biden Administration to immediately revoke the designation of the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.

The United States government’s decision to designate Ansar Allah, more commonly known as the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, as terrorists, is likely to have “serious humanitarian and political repercussions”, the UN spokesperson said on Monday.

On the last day of a year that has continued to brutalize the war-torn people of Yemen, UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths condemned a “despicable attack” on the country’s newly formed government as they arrived at Aden airport on Wednesday. 

[…] The agreement, first announced in November and revived in July, was brokered by Riyadh to end a standoff between Yemen’s internationally recognised government and southern separatists who are both part of the coalition that has been battling the Iran-aligned Houthi movement since 2015.

Famine-like conditions have re-appeared in parts of Yemen and almost half the population is experiencing high levels of food insecurity, new United Nations data showed on Thursday, with aid agencies warning time is running out to prevent mass starvation.

UN experts called on the Security Council on Thursday, along with the international community at large, to put an end to the “surreal and absurd dimension” of human rights violations engulfing war-torn Yemen, where abuses continue unchecked.  

In 1984 and 1985, about a million people died in Ethiopia in a famine that was widely broadcast on international television.