The UN mission acknowledges that the Houthis have restricted their movement in Hodeidah
English - Wednesday 28 April 2021 الساعة 12:29 am
Aden, NewsYemen:
The Peace Research Institute in Oslo confirmed that the Houthi militia had undermined the work of observers of the United Nations Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement in Yemen, by not adhering to the Stockholm Agreement, stressing that the militia prevented the mission from carrying out its mission by lethal means.
In a study prepared by researcher Julia Ballik, the institute said that the United Nations mission was unable to collect information about the violations due to restrictions imposed on its movements by the Houthis, and the lack of its cadres even wireless communication.
The study provided a descriptive analysis of the challenges faced by the monitoring officers of the United Nations Mission in Support of the Hofeidah Agreement during their mission.
According to Julia Palek, the study “Challenges of monitoring the ceasefire in Yemen” was based on all UN documents published on Yemen since the Stockholm Agreement, and expert interviews with UNMIS monitoring officers in support of the Hudaydah Agreement who have been deployed since March 2019 and the personnel participating in the mission.
The study said that the members of the UN mission were open about the difficulties they faced in Yemen, as one of them admits, "We were living in Houthi headquarters and they provided protection by force from them."
The study reported that local residents were reluctant to share information with the UN mission because they were afraid of potential retaliatory attacks from the Houthis, who are known for their repressive practices.
A local resident argued that reporting incidents is nearly impossible, given the tight security control by the Houthis, who "would simply kill me if they saw me talking to a foreigner, because they would accuse me of treason."
The Houthis forced the local population to obstruct the work of the monitors.
A monitoring officer recalls that when he had to leave Hudaydah, Houthi officers were waiting for him at the airport to confiscate his storage memory containing information about human rights violations committed by the Houthi militia in Al Hodeidah.
In the words of the officer, "It was an aide from the compound, no one saw me with this memory. I had 62 gigabytes of information. This local informed the Houthis, otherwise they wouldn't know that I have a memory chip."
At the same time, another member of the UN team was skeptical about the potential impact of increased force protection. “It will not make any difference if the UN mission in support of the Hodeidah Agreement is better equipped or if a peacekeeping operation is deployed,” he said.
The Stockholm Agreement consists of three separate agreements: the Hudaydah City Agreement, the Hodeidah , Salif and Ras Issa ports, the prisoner exchange agreement, and a statement of understanding on the city of Taiz.
The UN Security Council issued Resolution No. 2451 and authorized the deployment of a monitoring team for an initial period of 30 days to oversee the implementation of the agreement, followed by Resolution 2452, which established the United Nations Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement, and the period of the Observer Mission has been renewed three times and currently extends until July 2021.
The researcher said that the Houthis have realized the monitors 'weak position, which has enabled them to systematically prevent the observers from carrying out their tasks, and this disparity in power between the observers and the Houthis has resulted in the latter restricting the observers' freedom of movement and their ability to collect evidence.
