Yemen government urges UN to move to its Aden base

The Yemeni government has called on the United Nations to move to second city Aden after Houthis seized its office in the capital Sanaa and detained dozens of staff from international organizations.

The Iran-backed Houthis overran the capital Sanaa in 2014 and hold most of the country’s main population centers, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee to Aden.

An Arab coalition intervened to prop up the beleaguered government the following year.

On Tuesday, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the militants had entered its Sanaa office on August 3 and forced its staff to hand over the office keys and all its property.

In June, the militants arrested 13 UN personnel, an embassy employee and more than 50 NGO staff, according to the UN. Two other staff from the UN human rights office were detained in November 2021 and August 2023.

The Houthis said they had arrested members of an “Israeli-American spy ring” operating under the guise of humanitarian organizations. The UN strongly denied the accusation.

Eryani called on the international community to “take strong and deterrent measures commensurate with the crimes committed by the Houthi militia,” to pressure them to release the detained staff and to “immediately begin designating the militia as a global terrorist organization.”

The war in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Fighting has significantly decreased since the negotiation of a six-month truce by the UN in April 2022.

Since November, the Houthis have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.