Martin Griffiths flew to Sanaa ahead of talks with Houthi rebels and representatives of the Yemeni government. The UN envoy is hoping to resolve the warring sides' disagreements over the recently negotiated ceasefire.
Image: picture-alliance/Photoshot/M. Mohammed
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The UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, was due to visit the port city of Hodeida on Sunday, as part of a trip to support a recent ceasefire in the war-torn nation. The Red Sea port in Hodeida is the entry point for the majority of imports to Yemen, where more than 22 million people now depend on humanitarian aid to survive.
Griffiths arrived in the capital, Sanaa, on Saturday. He is scheduled to hold talks there with Houthi rebel leaders before heading to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to meet with Yemeni government officials.
In Sanaa, Griffiths will also meet retired Dutch general Patrick Cammaert, who has been appointed by the UN to head a truce monitoring team.
Yemen's warring factions agreed to the ceasefire in Hodeida during UN-led talks in Sweden in December 2018. Under the deal, both the handover of Hodeida port and the redeployment of troops should have been completed within 14 days of the truce, which took effect on December 18.
But that deadline has already lapsed. A member of the government's truce monitoring team told the AFP news agency that no agreement had yet been reached on who should be responsible for the port.
Yemen: An ever-worsening crisis
Yemen has struggled to cope with crises prompted by its atrocious civil war, including catastrophic hunger and devastating cholera outbreaks. DW examines the conflict and how it affects the country's civilian population.
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War: The 'root cause' of Yemen's disasters
The UN has identified conflict as the "root cause" of Yemen's crises. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the war erupted in 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels launched a campaign to capture the capital, Sanaa. In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition launched a deadly campaign against the rebels, one that has been widely criticized by human rights groups for its high civilian death toll.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/H. Mohammed
Fighting keeps food from the famished
The conflict has prevented humanitarian aid from reaching large parts of the civilian population, resulting in more than two-thirds of the country's 28 million people being classified as "food insecure." Nearly 3 million children and pregnant or nursing women are acutely malnourished, according to the UN World Food Program.
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Displacement: Converging crises
More than 3 million people have been displaced by conflict, including marginalized communities such as the "Muhammasheen," a minority tribe that originally migrated from Africa. Despite the civil war, many flee conflict in Somalia and head to Yemen, marking the convergence of two major migration crises in the Middle East nation. Yemen hosts around 250,000 Somali refugees, according to UNHCR.
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Cholera: A deadly epidemic
The number of suspected cholera cases has exceeded more than 2 million and least 3,700 people have died from the waterborne bacterial infection in Yemen since October 2019, said the WHO. Although cholera can be easily treated, it can kill within hours when untreated.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Unsuspecting victims of the'war on terror'
In Yemen, violence goes beyond civil conflict: It is considered a strategic front in the war on terrorism. The country serves as the operational base for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, dubbed the "most dangerous" terrorist group before the rise of the "Islamic State." The US routinely uses drones to target al-Qaida leadership. However, civilians have often been killed in the operations.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Y. Arhab
Children's fate: Future marred by tragedy
In a country paralyzed by conflict, children are one of the most at-risk groups in Yemen. More than 12 million children require humanitarian aid, according to the UN humanitarian coordination agency. The country's education system is "on the brink of collapse," while children are dying of "preventable causes like malnutrition, diarrhea and respiratory tract infections," according to the agency.
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Peace: An elusive future
Despite several attempts at UN-backed peace talks, the conflict continues to rage on. Saudi Arabia has vowed to continue supporting the internationally recognized government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. On the other hand, Houthi rebels have demanded the formation of a unity government in order to move forward on a political solution. A peace deal, however, remains elusive.
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A tenuous truce
Griffiths played a key role in the ceasefire negotiation and is hoping that during his trip he can push the two opposing sides to fully implement it, officials said.
This will not be an easy task, as both sides believe that they should run the port.
Yemen's government has insisted that the port should be handed over to "the local authorities in accordance with Yemen law," an official who requested anonymity told AFP.
As such, the government believes the port should be handed over to officials who ran the facility before the Houthis captured Hodeida in late 2014, the official said. But the Houthis insist that "the local authorities" actually refers to the officials currently running the port, with whom they share an alliance.
Yemen has been consumed by the conflict between the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed central government since 2015, when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into Saudi exile and the war escalated.
The conflict has unleashed the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, which says 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine.
