Houthi Detentions Leave Stark Choices for Aid Sector

Introduction

On January 23, the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) detained seven UN staff members working in Sana’a.^[1] In response, the UN halted the movement of all staff working in Houthi-controlled territories^[2] as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the UN workers’ immediate release.^[3] But the incident is just the latest in a string of disappearances and detentions of UN, NGO, and civil society staff in Yemen, who are often held without charge and denied contact with lawyers or family members.^[4]

In the early summer of 2024, the Houthis began to forcibly disappear dozens of Yemeni civil society organization (CSO) and non-governmental organization (NGO) workers and UN staff.^[5] These detentions were soon accompanied by unsubstantiated charges of espionage^[6] and coerced televised confessions. The group’s interference in and manipulation of the provision of aid is hardly new, but this had historically taken the form of diverting supplies, embezzling funds, altering beneficiary lists, and other forms of corruption that prevented assistance from reaching the intended recipients.^[7] The unprecedented scale of the detentions sent shockwaves through the aid sector and civil society in Houthi-controlled areas, with dire implications for other parts of the country. Scores of Yemenis who work or have worked with international entities have since fled.^[8] The detentions represent a sea-change in the relationship between the authorities in Sana’a and the humanitarian community, which faces difficult questions of how and whether it can provide a principled response^[9] in an increasingly coercive environment.

Since the arrest campaign began, an intense debate over the future of humanitarian work in Yemen has divided the aid community. UN leaders have sought to continue humanitarian operations at all costs, albeit with a narrowed focus on life-saving work. Some organizations are relocating staff, offices, and resources to Aden and the government-controlled south. Others are suspending operations or cutting back. Houthi authorities, meanwhile, have exploited these divisions to consolidate control over civil society and the provision of aid. Retreat on programs outside the scope of humanitarian aid delivery, such as human rights, governance, peacebuilding, and interventions seeking to serve women and girls, has only ceded these areas to the Houthis.

The Sana’a Center interviewed 14 current and former humanitarian workers and civil society members with knowledge of the situation to ascertain their perspectives on the situation and its implications for Yemen’s precarious future.

Amid frustrations with the ongoing detentions and the pace of the response, the primary contention made by interviewees was that the Houthis might backtrack in the face of unified, serious, coordinated action from donors, the UN, and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). They have done so before. If real consequences were forthcoming, many in the aid community believe the group would return to the negotiating table and discuss the release of the kidnapped workers and acknowledge the parameters of humanitarian engagement. As one interviewee said: “The Houthis can’t stand alone in Sana’a; they can’t survive without the aid community.”^[10]

A Muted Response

The massive humanitarian response during the war in Yemen has been beset by well-documented troubles,^[11] including the widespread manipulation of aid by the warring parties. But the systemic targeting of aid workers by the Houthis is an unprecedented transgression, rare even in the conflict-affected areas where humanitarians often work.^[12] On June 1, 2024, Houthi authorities sentenced 44 Yemenis to death on accusations of spying for the Saudi-led coalition.^[13] Among them was Adnan al-Harazi, the owner of a firm hired by international donors and implementing agencies to monitor aid delivery in Houthi-held areas. Days after his sentencing, the group raided the homes and offices of dozens of Yemeni employees of UN agencies, international aid organizations, and their implementing partners, including local NGOs and CSOs. By June 12, the Houthi Security and Intelligence Service had forcibly disappeared more than 60 Yemeni NGO and civil society workers,^[14] including 13 UN personnel,^[15] and aired the first of a series of forced confessions.

The public response from UN agencies, international NGOs, and donors has been slow and relatively muted. The UN and other organizations have made periodic statements condemning the arrests and demanding the release of their staff,^[16] and negotiations for the release of detainees continue.^[17] But only a handful of organizations took rapid action. In August, Germany’s development body GIZ announced plans to close its Sana’a office within six months and relocate to Aden.^[18] Behind the scenes, the rest of the aid community formed a Crisis Management Team to stake out a position that would send a signal to the Houthis without jeopardizing their work. Some donors urged the UN to take a firm stance against the Houthis to ensure staff safety.^[19] In September, the UN belatedly settled on a temporary plan to pare down operations in Houthi-held northern Yemen by focusing only on “life-saving and life-sustaining” activities, or direct humanitarian aid distribution.^[20] In November, the Swedish government announced that it too would suspend development – but not humanitarian – aid to Yemen, citing the kidnapping of UN employees and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.^[21]

The UN explained the program prioritization as a way to minimize staff members’ exposure to risk in Houthi-controlled territories.^[22] Its purported purpose was to punish the Houthis by demonstrating that targeting the aid community would decrease aid and funding directed to Houthi areas while at the same time protecting staff from potential arrest and detention by limiting their operations. Western donors supported the move and urged the international community to redirect aid elsewhere in the country.^[23]

In practice, however, the plan may have rewarded the Houthis by cutting the capacity building, institutional support, and other development programs the group sees as threatening its ideological and political objectives while leaving humanitarian aid streams intact. Retreating from these areas intensified the pressure on civil society at the very moment it was being targeted and conformed to a common Houthi demand to the aid community: “Fill our stomachs, not our minds.”^[24] By leaving unchanged humanitarian aid distribution, which represents the vast majority of aid in Houthi-held areas and is the most readily exploitable for political and financial ends, the plan effectively maintains the subsidies that help the Houthis to recruit and feed its soldiers and consolidate control over state structures.^[25] As for the staff whose work was put on hold, they remained at risk: most of the detainees were arrested at their homes.

As the international aid community deliberated more concrete steps, local employees and contractors, including those working in Yemeni NGOs and in civil society, fled Houthi areas en masse, fearing they could be arrested at any moment. Some relocated to the interim capital, Aden, or the government-controlled cities of Taiz, Marib, and Mukalla. Others departed Yemen altogether, with some seeking asylum in Egypt, Europe, or the US. The exodus of local staff and civil society workers has helped the Houthis with a project they have been working on for years:^[26] to stock UN agencies and INGOs with loyalists and either secure the subservience of civil society or remake it in their image.^[27]

A climate of fear was already prevalent in Houthi areas prior to the June crackdown, but humanitarians have since grown quieter on topics the Houthis would rather not discuss, such as gender issues and peacebuilding, effectively removing them from public conversation.^[28] The takeaway for many interviewees was that the rules have changed: one can no longer avoid being targeted by eschewing previously perceived transgressions, such as working for a US-affiliated organization. “Now you need to actively help the Houthis and be useful to them,” one interviewee put it.^[29]

“It’s a tectonic shift,” said one foreign aid worker with decades of experience in Yemen. In the early years of Houthi rule, “I justified looking the other way by saying I’m helping strengthen civil society and advocat[ing] for the localization agenda. Civil society was our one hope. But now it’s gone. If everybody is not reevaluating their work with the Houthis, then there’s something wrong.”^[30]

The current crisis is the culmination of years of allowing the Houthis to manipulate, subvert, and chip away at principled humanitarian work in northern Yemen. But interviewees voiced concerns that the responses that have been undertaken by the humanitarian community are the same as those that failed to deter Houthi action in the past.^[31] In sum, the disjointed, muffled response from the UN, INGOs, and donors has allowed the Houthis to normalize the abduction of Yemeni employees and use espionage allegations to consolidate control over lucrative aid, gain leverage against the international community, limit public discourse, and marginalize what is left of independent civil society.

In an August letter to donors, UN agencies, and INGOs endorsed by dozens of Yemeni civil society groups and media outlets, members of the community laid out their concerns with the UN’s approach. According to the letter, in the immediate aftermath of the June kidnappings, the local head of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Renaud Detalle, was particularly vocal about the arrests of UN staffers – eight of whom worked at OHCHR. He reportedly urged the top UN official in Yemen, Julien Harneis, to take a stronger stance. Harneis, who has held the positions of UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator since February 2024, had sought a conciliatory approach to the Houthis and allegedly complained to superiors that Detalle had undermined that approach. Detalle was later summoned to Geneva and reassigned. The letter highlights a shared concern over the approach of Harneis and recently appointed Wood Food Programme (WFP) Country Director Pierre Honnorat: that they are appeasing the Houthis rather than holding the group accountable.^[32]

A Frog in Boiling Water

A decade after Houthi rebels seized Sana’a, Yemen remains among the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than half the population in need of aid. With insufficient development assistance to redress the shattered economy, the country is perennially reliant on massive amounts of humanitarian aid to stave off famine and provide basic services. Aid operations designed to provide short-term relief are renewed year after year to fill the enormous need left by the absent, insolvent state and shattered economy. As other revenue vectors have declined, control over aid distribution networks has become increasingly important as authorities seek to exploit limited resources for political benefit.

While the mass arrest of UN and INGO staff is a major escalation by the authorities in Sana’a, their relationship with the sector has always been deeply problematic. Since the six Sa’ada wars, (2004-10) in which the regime of then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh fought a nascent Houthi insurgency in northern Yemen, the aid response has been troubled by allegations of interference.^[33] The trend continued following Yemen’s first consolidated humanitarian appeal process, established in the wake of the Arab uprisings in 2010. But Houthi efforts to subvert aid have grown increasingly brazen since the group seized power in September 2014. Its control over the aid sector started to tighten in late 2017 when it created the National Authority for the Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (NAMCHA) shortly after Houthi forces disposed of their then-ally in Sana’a, former president Saleh.^[34] NAMCHA centralized authority, giving the group uncontested oversight over all aid operations in the north for the first time.

Centralization only solidified the abuse of the aid sector. In response to rampant Houthi aid diversion, in 2018, the WFP revived efforts to incorporate biometric technology to ensure food reached its intended recipients. The Houthis’ refusal to launch the biometric system and continued obstruction and diversion led the WFP to partially suspend operations in the north in June 2019.^[35] Less than six months later, the Houthis launched a new body, the Supreme Council for the Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and International Cooperation (SCMCHA). This was given expanded financial oversight powers and coordinated directly with international humanitarian donors, an authority formerly reserved for the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation. Houthi authorities empowered SCMCHA to collect a 2 percent tax on every humanitarian project in the country, define humanitarian aid priorities, and have a national security figure sit on each agency’s board of directors. When the international aid community refused to implement these demands, Houthi authorities stole 120 metric tons of lentils from WFP warehouses and detained the agency’s biometric equipment at the airport in Sana’a.^[36]

In February 2020, INGOs, UN leadership, and donors, including the US and British governments, met in Brussels to discuss a potential aid freeze in Houthi-controlled areas to address the ongoing obstruction, theft, and diversion of humanitarian aid. Fearing a massive suspension of aid, the Houthis quietly returned the lentils, released WFP’s biometric equipment, and agreed to cancel the 2 percent tax.^[37] To monitor aid access going forward,^[38] donors set up a mechanism to track Houthi compliance, along with new pre-conditions and benchmarks, including reducing bureaucracy and unrealistic requirements for project approval and permits for subsequent activities. In June 2020, a donor-pledging conference saw a major drop in funding, pushing Houthi authorities to sign off on a backlog of sub-agreements that were preventing aid organizations from carrying out their work. The rapid issuance of approvals^[39] was apparently driven out of a fear that continued obstinance would see further funding cuts. But despite initial compliance with the new mechanism, Houthi red tape soon returned to existing levels.

In early 2022, the Houthis’ strict enforcement of a mahram (male guardian) policy dealt another blow to the aid community and civil society.^[40] The requirement for a mahram to accompany women during travel was designed to target women working in public spaces, which is stigmatized in Houthi ideology. Given that many women in Houthi areas work in the aid sector and civil society organizations, the policy was an effective way to curb their influence and shrink the space in which they are allowed to operate in society. It also reduced the overall capacity of the humanitarian sector, in particular its ability to serve women and girls and address gendered needs in Yemen.^[41]

A UN-sanctioned ceasefire in April 2022 led to a steep decline in frontline fighting, a prisoner exchange, and renewed hopes of a negotiated settlement. However, while the zones of control have largely stabilized, long-running problems with humanitarian access have not improved.^[42] Instead, Houthi authorities have used the lull to project power abroad and to consolidate their control over state institutions, the private sector, and the provision of development and humanitarian aid. Ongoing Houthi manipulation and interference in aid work was highlighted in a recent Reuters investigation,^[43] which detailed the group’s attempts to hijack research^[44] for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a scale for reporting data^[45] on food insecurity to help donors and aid organizations prevent famine. The group exaggerated a food crisis in certain areas under its control in an attempt to secure more aid. Such efforts are particularly malign given the real and sustained malnutrition and food insecurity in Yemen and the underfunded response.

According to interviewees, the compound effect of hindering humanitarian operations has been the creation of a culture of complacency, in which simply being on the ground in the north is claimed as an achievement.^[46] From this baseline, any concessions (actual or promised) from the Houthis are celebrated as a sign that conditions might improve. But in aggregate, the ability of the UN, NGOs, and civil society groups to deliver a principled humanitarian response has steadily deteriorated over time. Mass arrests, death sentences, and fabricated espionage allegations are merely the latest evolution of the Houthis’ subversion of the aid sector and civil society, and they continue to seek greater control over these organizations, their resources, and Yemeni society at large.^[47]

Meet the New Boss

On August 10, the Houthis sought to soften the shock of the arrests and espionage allegations by reforming the Sana’a-based government under the banner of “change and reconstruction.” From the aid community’s point of view, one of the highlights of the reforms was the long-discussed dissolution of the notorious SCMCHA. Its responsibilities were transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Jamal Amer, an approachable former journalist. Amer was most likely chosen for his greater capacity to charm the international community or at least appear responsive to its concerns. But the transfer of power was entirely cosmetic: the Houthi Security and Intelligence Service still has the last say on all matters in the aid sector.^[48]

Under the guise of reform, the dissolution of SCMCHA and other structural changes, including those relating to the judiciary, have functioned to further centralize Houthi control over humanitarian operations.^[49] This enables tighter oversight and the increased politicization of aid flows, making it even harder for civil society organizations and implementing organizations to operate independently and further shrinking civic space.^[50] Muddying the waters with the reinvention and renaming of its agents simply provided the Houthis a respite from accountability.

The changes also represented a missed opportunity to push back. UN leaders might have refused to engage with the foreign ministry. Instead, the UN readily agreed to work with Amer as the new humanitarian representative in Houthi-held areas.^[51]

The bitter irony of the situation is that the aid community is subsidizing the work of the Houthi government – hospitals in Sana’a rely on World Health Organization (WHO) funding^[52] and Houthi power brokers use WFP food aid to appease loyalists, entice recruits, and feed their soldiers.^[53] In conflict zones, such compromises are often the necessary evil of a principled response seeking to serve the most vulnerable. But even as the Yemen conflict had essentially frozen, Houthi exploitation grew more comprehensive, and its targeting of humanitarians more extreme. Yet the humanitarian community has generally allowed the Houthis to continue to dictate the terms of the relationship.

Stay or Go?

The international aid community faces a dilemma. Local staff are no longer safe in Houthi-held areas, and many operations are crippled by Houthi obstruction, diversion, and theft, with no signs of improvement. At the same time, Yemeni civilians remain in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Interviewees identified three potential paths forward for the aid sector and their implications for the response in Yemen.

The first envisions a business-as-usual approach by the international aid community. The UN and INGOs would keep their headquarters in Sana’a and negotiate the terms of their continued work with the Houthi foreign ministry. This approach would likely strengthen the Houthi position, giving the group little incentive to release the kidnapped aid workers or exonerate those accused of being spies.^[54] It would likely hasten the death of independent civil society in Houthi-held areas, as any perceived lack of support for the group could be used to justify further espionage allegations and arrests.^[55] International influence and leverage in Houthi areas would also be weakened by demonstrating to the group that it can continue to gain political capital and revenue by exploiting the humanitarian crisis. Some note that the Houthis already control virtually every aspect of aid work in their areas.^[56] Under this scenario, the insertion of Houthi-approved staff, lack of oversight, and increasing risks of aid diversion would further degrade the quality of assistance and the ability to serve those most in need.

A second potential path would be for international aid organizations to relocate to Aden and other areas controlled by the government. Doing so would help ensure the protection of many of the local employees and contractors of UN agencies and INGOs. In Houthi-held areas, the primary threat from the ruling authorities, who have shown their willingness to raid offices and homes and harass aid workers in myriad ways.^[57] While there are security threats in Aden, they emanate less from the governing authorities themselves.^[58] Although relocating offices would reduce operational risks, it would inevitably complicate aid delivery to the north, particularly as the bulk of food and humanitarian supplies are distributed through the Houthi-held port of Hudaydah.^[59] Delivering aid across frontlines would introduce further costs and inefficiencies.^[60] While an influx of northern employees to southern governorates like Aden has the potential to exacerbate regional tensions,^[61] many northerners have moved south in recent years, dodging anti-northern sentiment by avoiding sensitive topics like secession.^[62]

A third scenario would see the international aid community halt operations in Houthi-held areas to pressure the de facto authorities to release detainees and lift restrictions. This plan of action was overwhelmingly supported by the sources interviewed for this paper.^[63] But the suspension of aid could carry a terrible price for the populations that depend on it.

There is a further question of the feasibility of coordinated action by the sector.^[64] Donors, the UN, and NGOs can struggle to agree on clear steps, and such processes can take so long that they fail to keep up with events. There are institutional reasons for collective action problems in the provision of aid.^[65] Bodies such as the Yemen Partners Group (YPG) and its Yemen Partners Technical Team (YPTT) are designed to coordinate the aid response but have seen mixed results to date.^[66] Despite the participation of multiple stakeholders, including the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen (OSESGY), the YPG’s capacity for building a united front in negotiations with the Houthis remains unclear. For his part, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Julien Harneis has emphasized the apolitical nature of the response and the necessity of neutrality to maintain aid flows and access.^[67] Others have voiced a similar concern – that the principles that guide humanitarian action make its actors unsuited to handling such pressures, and that wielding political leverage is better left to political actors. The problem, then, is the inability or unwillingness of political actors to condition Houthi behavior. As the broadening scope of Houthi military operations since October 2023 attests, this is no small task. But it means that humanitarian organizations’ only protection may be the value they themselves bring to the table.

Taking a Stand

To secure the release of Yemeni workers, roll back Houthi control of the aid sector, and prevent future violations, actors at all levels of the international humanitarian aid community must work together. Doing so will be difficult. Aid actors operate collaboratively but also in competition and are subject to the political and financial constraints of donors. Headquarters and regional offices cost money to run, so institutional considerations, as well as moral reservations, can de-incentivize change. Interviewees agreed that donors must take the lead in corralling aid actors and dictating the terms of engagement in negotiations with the Houthis. Threatening to suspend aid to Houthi areas risks harming the population under their control, but interviewees argued it might lead to a safer and more effective system of distribution. “We’re so afraid to say to the Houthis what’s blatantly clear and true, which is that we’re the people with the funds,” a longtime aid worker said. “Let us get kicked out. Then we restart negotiations on our terms.”^[68]

The response of the UN to such calls has been to cite the neutrality of aid operations and Yemen’s dire humanitarian needs while ignoring the Houthis’ broader aims. The flaws of such an outlook are obvious, in that willful blindness to political realities makes the system ripe for manipulation and abuse. Providing aid in resource-scarce environments is an inherently political act, and ignoring the problems of its instrumentalization will not make them go away. The Houthis use the resources they extract from the aid sector to recruit and feed fighters as they commit egregious human rights violations, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis, and steadily eroding independent civil society. Fear among the international community of being accused of politicizing aid has allowed the Houthis to hijack the sector and profit from it financially, politically, and militarily.

Some 60 UN, NGO, and civil society staff remain imprisoned. Just three have been released. Following the January 23 kidnappings, the UN briefly suspended the movement of staff in Houthi-controlled areas. Offices were reopened on February 2, with the exception of Sa’ada governorate and parts of Amran, where they remain shuttered.^[69] The mountainous northern governorate is the birthplace of the Houthi movement and its founders. It is also the scene of recent airstrikes against the group, which may want to limit access. UN leadership in New York has reportedly suspended all operations in Sa’ada indefinitely, though whether to protect staff or protest the detentions is not clear, and no official statement has been released. Angry Houthi officials allegedly responded that if such a decision went ahead, they would transfer detained aid workers to the courts, with the implicit threat of trumped-up charges and trial.

The state of the ongoing negotiations is not clear, and the Houthis’ documented torture and killing of prisoners lends credence to such threats. But there is no surprise this time. Perhaps the Houthis’ targeting of aid workers is now better understood, as a threat to those who remain in detention, those who continue to work, and to a Yemeni society in urgent need of support.

This paper was produced as part of the Applying Economic Lenses and Local Perspectives to Improve Humanitarian Aid Delivery in Yemen project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.