There is a glimmer of hope for peace in Yemen as the warring parties have agreed to meet in Sweden to hold peace talks in the next few days.
The United Nations’ Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths travelled to the capital Sana’a to oversee the evacuation of 50 Houthi fighters to Muscat, Oman, for treatment on December 3rd.
It is considered a major breakthrough that the Saudi-led coalition has approved this evacuation, and is seen by many as a confidence building measure and a precursor to dialogue.
The UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has welcomed this cessation in hostilities, having pushed Saudi Arabia and the Houthis to come to a ‘political solution’ a fortnight earlier.
Dr. Dan Plesch, the Director of the Centre for International Studies at Diplomacy at SOAS was skeptical of these talks, saying that while “no one should give up hope, there is little reason” to believe they will lead to a political solution.
Western governments have come under increasing public pressure to stop the atrocities in Yemen. Pressure on online platforms like Twitter and Reddit has been mounting.
May’s backing for the lawless and inhuman Saudi regime must be challenged #StopArmingSaudi https://t.co/ESFTWrCvIb pic.twitter.com/PkahtgDZXh
— Esther ten Wolthuis (@Eire353) November 30, 2018
Furthermore, a recent report in The Guardian criticized Britain’s role in the conflict, saying that that the UK’s £570 million worth of humanitarian aid pales in comparison to the £4.7 billion arms deal that the UK has with Saudi Arabia.
Strongly criticizing the sale of arms to the Saudi-led-coalition in this conflict, Dr. Plesch said that “weapons suppliers to the Saudis appear to be chargeable with war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Four years of incessant fighting between the Houthi forces and those loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government has led to widespread destruction and the complete disruption of life in one of the Middle East’s poorest countries.
While it is difficult to measure the number of casualties so far, an independent conflict monitor has claimed that more than 57,000 civilians have been killed since the civil war beban in 2015.
A further estimated 17 million people are at severe risk of starvation because of the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade of Yemen since November 2017, according to the United Nations. If the worst comes to pass, it would be a scale of death unheard of since WWII. For context, the Spanish Civil War led to around 1 million deaths, and the Vietnam War, an estimated 3.8 million.
The head of the World Food Programme Mr. Beasley spoke at the UN Security Council last month, stating: “What I have seen in Yemen this week is the stuff of nightmares, of horror, of the deprivation, of misery. And we – all of humanity – have only ourselves to blame.”
The conflict in Yemen has roots in the failure of the transition of power meant to bring stability to the country following the Arab Spring in 2011. The Houthi movement, who had clashed with the government in the past,started to gain more ground and took control of large parts of Saada province in the north west, and later the capital of Sana’a in 2014.
This led to the beginning of the full blown civil war, when a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia intervened on behalf of the Yemeni government in 2015. It has since become an immensely complicated conflict with multiple actors vying for control and influence in different parts of the country, that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands and has put millions more at risk.
When questioned about the road to peace going forward, Dr. Plesch said that a solution would need to be “part of a regional settlement of confidence building and arms control […] as detailed globally in the SOAS www.scrapweapons.com project.”