UN rights chief seeks international probe of Yemen violence

“Unfortunately, the humanitarian situation in Yemen is very bad,” he told reporters.

Zeid, who is also a member of the Jordanian royal family, did not specify who would set up the international body, but he is expected to present the report’s findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council at its session next month.

Last year, the council passed a resolution — brought by Saudi Arabia and its allies — that deferred to national investigators to report on rights abuses.

The Houthis and forces allied to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee the country. A Saudi-led coalition launched an air campaign against the Houthis in March 2015, pushing them out of southern Yemen, but has failed so far to dislodge them from Sanaa and the rest of the north.

Zeid’s office says an estimated 3,799 civilians have been killed since the air campaign by the U.S.-backed coalition began. The U.N. and rights groups estimate at least 9,000 people overall have died. Some 3 million people have also been displaced inside the Arab world’s poorest country.

According to the report, airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition were responsible for 60 per cent of the 2,067 civilians killed in the conflict over a year-long span starting on July 1, 2015. Just under one-quarter — 475 — civilian deaths were attributed to rebel forces like those loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and another 113 to affiliates of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Saudi Arabia lobbied hard to weigh in on language included in a draft of the U.N. report before its release, and Yemen’s foreign minister recently travelled to Geneva to press the government’s case to diplomats.

Faisal Bin Hassan Trad, the Saudi ambassador in Geneva, provided to The Associated Press an 18-page rebuttal to the draft sent to the U.N. offices earlier this month, which detailed measures by the coalition such as dropping leaflets warning of military action and use of precision-guided munitions. That was aimed to show the coalition has taken to ensure that civilians and medical facilities were not targeted.

Thursday’s report by the U.N. rights office also denounced the recruitment of child fighters in Yemen, civilian casualties linked to suspected U.S. drone strikes that target al-Qaida’s local branch, attacks on human rights defenders and a crackdown on freedom of expression.

Last week, the aid group Doctors Without Borders announced a pullout from northern Yemen following an airstrike against a hospital it supported there — the fourth such deadly attack on one of its medical facilities in the war.

U.N.-mediated peace talks in Kuwait between the warring Yemeni sides were suspended earlier this month with no signs of progress.

Jamey Keaten, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

UN rights chief seeks international probe of Yemen violence

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