Hadil al-Mowafak is a non-resident fellow with the Sana’a Center, focused on peacebuilding, human rights, and environmental security. Following the outbreak of war in Yemen, Al-Mowafak joined Mwatana for Human Rights as a researcher, investigating war crimes and human rights violations. In 2016, she moved to the United States, where she graduated with a degree in Political Science from Stanford…
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Al-Qaeda’s Shifting Alliances During the Yemen War
During the fighting in Shabwa last year and more recently in Abyan, forces affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council (STC) locked horns with Islah-affiliated government forces. Both sides accused the other of links to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Such claims have been a feature of the war since 2015, but are usually more rhetorical than real, lacking evidence…
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The Yemen Review – August 2018
In the last six days of August the Yemeni rial entered one of its steepest and most rapid declines in value since the conflict began, resulting in sudden price spikes for basic foodstuffs. Given Yemen’s overwhelming dependence on imports to feed the population, such changes in the rial’s value have direct implications for the country’s humanitarian crisis.
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Yemen at the UN – May 2018 Review
In May, Houthi forces were clearly on the defensive across most of Yemen, in particular losing ground in Hudaydah governorate as various anti-Houthi groups, backed by Emirati airpower, advanced on Hudaydah city. A Saudi-led coalition plan for a military offensive on the city last year was derailed due to a lack of US support and international outcry over the likelihood…
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A Year of Hunger and Blood: Yemen at the UN / Special Issue – 2017 in Review
In early 2017 the United Nations (UN) declared that Yemen was enduring the single largest humanitarian crisis in the world. By year’s end, UN agencies estimated that 17.8 million people in Yemen were food insecure and 8.4 million were at risk of famine. Economic and public service collapse left more than 16 million Yemenis without access to safe water and…
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Yemen at the UN – April 2017 Review
In April, the Saudi-led military coalition’s proposed assault on the rebel-held Red Sea port of Hudaydah, and the likely humanitarian catastrophe it would precipitate, was again the focus of most international policy discussions regarding Yemen. By month’s end, however, widespread opposition to the operation within the US, at the UN, within the humanitarian community and elsewhere appeared to gain purchase with both the Saudi-led coalition and American policy makers contemplating United States military support for the action, with these latter…
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Yemen at the UN – February 2017 Review
In February, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated that “Yemen is facing the largest food security emergency in the world”, and estimated that the country’s domestic reserves of wheat would be completely exhausted by the end of March 2017. The UN human rights commission raised credible reports that war crimes were committed by both the main warring sides during battles for the Red Sea port town of Mukha. These battles saw the forces backing Yemeni President…
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Yemen at the UN – January 2017 Review
In January, the UN Special Envoy to Yemen Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed entered a period of shuttle diplomacy in an attempt revive the same peace proposal he’d put forward in December 2016 – a proposal Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi had at that time flatly rejected. The UN 2140 Sanctions Committee’s Panel of Experts reported last month that neither side in the conflict has “demonstrated sustained interest in or commitment to a political settlement or peace talks”, while pro-Hadi…
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TRUMP’S VISA BAN HARMS FAMILIES AND WAR VICTIMS, DAMAGES CRUCIAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH EFFORTS
President Donald Trump’s Executive Order banning entry into the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries is discriminatory, and will force families apart, deny refuge to persons escaping war and persecution, end education opportunities for students, and damage critical international research, say advocates at the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, a leading Yemeni think tank.
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