Human Rights Watch Submission to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on Yemen

We write in advance of the 73rd Session of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its review of the Republic of Yemen’s compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Protection of Adequate Health, and Adequate Standard of Living, including the Right to Food During Armed Conflict (articles 2, 3, 11, and 12)

The protracted armed conflict in Yemen has had grave impacts on the right to health and the right to an adequate standard of living. According to UNICEF, over 23 million people in Yemen, out of a population of about 30 million, are in need of humanitarian assistance, including nearly 13 million children.[1] Parties to the conflict have attacked civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and food and water infrastructure, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. This has gravely inhibited peoples’ access to water, food, and medicine, and has consequently had dire consequences for health and standard of living.

Specifically, by the end of 2022, UN agencies reported that 17.8 million people in Yemen did not have access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services, and 17 million were food insecure, with 6.1 million facing “emergency” levels of food insecurity.[2] According to Mwatana for Human Rights and Global Rights Compliance, the Saudi and UAE-led Coalition has repeatedly carried out attacks on food and water infrastructure across Yemen, including targeting farms, irrigation works, and fishing boats.[3] These attacks violate international humanitarian law’s prohibition on attacking, destroying, removing, or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.[4] Furthermore, the attacks have contributed to widespread food insecurity and increased the humanitarian crisis.

Parties to the conflict have repeatedly attacked hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well as medical workers. From the start of the conflict through March of 2020, there were at least 142 documented attacks on medical facilities across the country.[5] The International Committee of the Red Cross stated in March of 2022 that “only 51% of health facilities are in service” in Yemen.[6] 

In addition to direct attacks, parties to the conflict, in particular the Houthi forces (also known as Ansar Allah), have also obstructed access to humanitarian aid, further exacerbating humanitarian needs. Human Rights Watch has documented many cases of aid interference and obstruction by the Houthis, including lengthy delays for approval of aid projects, blocking aid assessments to identify peoples’ needs, attempts to control aid monitoring and recipient lists to divert aid to those loyal to the authorities, and violence against aid staff and their property.[7] An aid worker, discussing the obstacles the Houthis had put in place to the delivery of aid, told Human Rights Watch: “It’s very simple; we can’t reach communities where people are dying.”[8]

The Yemeni government has also impeded aid through the imposition of complex  bureaucratic requirements on aid agencies that have impacted millions of civilians’ ability to access much-needed aid.[9] Partly in response to the obstruction of aid by both the Yemeni government and the Houthis, donors have significantly cut their support to UN aid agencies, creating even further aid shortages.[10]

The city of Taizz in particular has been severely impacted by Houthi aid obstruction. Residents have faced a dire humanitarian crisis since 2015 when the Houthis closed off all major roads into and out of the city, and the International Committee of the Red stated in March 2022 that “the severity of food and water needs is dangerously acute in Taizz.”[11] The road closures have severely restricted the flow of essential goods, including medicine and food, as well as humanitarian access into the city.[12] As part of the negotiated truce in force between April and October 2022, the UN shared a proposal on July 3, 2022 to re-open the roads, but the Houthis promptly rejected the proposal and the roads remain closed.[13]

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Committee call on the government of Yemen to:

• Provide more resources to healthcare facilities and government bodies managing water and sanitation, so that they may work to address many of the gaps in access to medical care, clean water, and sanitation.
• Prohibit all attacks on hospitals, water and food infrastructure, and other civilian objects, per international law, and prioritize rebuilding and rehabilitating previously damaged water and food infrastructure.
• End all unnecessary obstacles and interference of humanitarian aid and work closely with UN agencies and non-UN aid organizations to expeditiously process all future aid project proposals and travel requests.
• Facilitate meetings in Yemen with donor government officials at senior levels to help secure the maximum donor support to address the humanitarian crisis.
• Avoid government regulations on medicine, fuel, and other goods that disrupt humanitarian assistance without justification.

Children and People with Disabilities’ Right to Health, Adequate Standard of Living, and Education during Armed Conflict (articles 11, 12, and 13)

Children and people with disabilities often face increased risk of harm during armed conflict and crises. In 2020, Humanity & Inclusion reported that conflict-related deterioration of infrastructure, health care, and other services in Yemen, including because of the use of explosive weapons in areas with civilian populations, had a disproportionate impact on children and adults with disabilities.[14] They found that 86 percent of people with disabilities surveyed had experienced problems obtaining services due to physical barriers, lack of security, and economic and social discrimination. Increased prices of medications and denial of humanitarian assistance are also serious concerns.[15] 

Humanity and Inclusion’s 2020 findings confirmed that challenges identified by Human Rights Watch research in November 2015 had not tangibly improved. At that time, Human Rights Watch interviewed 29 Yemenis with disabilities and their families. Hanan, a 4-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, needed medications that had become unaffordable. Her father said: “Her medication is important for her health because when she takes it regularly, she only experiences an epileptic seizure once every two weeks. But when she does not take the medicine, she experiences a seizure twice a day…. It’s hard to feel useless.”[16]  Human Rights Watch found that damage to existing infrastructure and roads made parts of Yemen difficult to navigate for people with disabilities. Hind, a 25-year-old woman with a physical disability, told Human Rights Watch that life is “very tiring… Most of the time I prefer to stay home rather than go out… Due to my disability I regularly fall on the ground if I don’t watch where I’m putting my legs.”[17]

In a June 2020 address to the UN Security Council, Raja Abdullah Almasabi, a disability rights activist from Yemen, said: “Denial of humanitarian access has created chronic health conditions, especially among children, such as malnutrition. This is one of the primary reasons why many children in Yemen have acquired a disability.”[18]

Research also indicates that all children living in conflict and crises zones are at high risk of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.[19] In 2020, Save the Children reported that over half of the children they surveyed in Yemen reported feelings of sadness and depression, “with more than 1 in 10 saying they feel that way constantly.”[20]

In April 2022, the Houthis signed an action plan with the United Nations pledging to end recruitment and use of children as soldiers, killing and maiming of children, and attacks against schools and hospitals.[21]  "By then, according to the UN, the parties to the conflict, including the Houthis, were responsible for killing and maiming more than 10,200 children, and close to 3,500 children had been verified as recruited and used in Yemen in the eight years of the conflict.[22] Houthi rockets, indiscriminate artillery attacks, and use of landmines have caused thousands of child casualties. The Houthis have attacked scores of schools and hospitals, used schools for military purposes, and blocked humanitarian assistance.[23] Pro-government Yemeni forces have also carried out indiscriminate missile strikes, deployed children into combat, and attacked schools and hospitals.[24] 

While UN action plans have been a powerful tool to prompt warring parties to end violations against children, parties to the conflict in Yemen have a poor record of keeping such commitments. Houthi leaders pledged in 2012 to end use of child soldiers,[25] as did the Yemeni government in 2014.[26]  Despite these promises, the UN verified 8,526 violations against children in Yemen in 2019-2020.[27]

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Committee call on the government of Yemen to:

• Ensure access to affordable medication and humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of people with disabilities, including children.
• Conduct rights-based public information campaigns to raise awareness about rights of people with disabilities, especially among mental health service providers and the broader community, in partnership with people with lived experiences of physical and psychosocial disability.

Corporal Punishment of Children (articles 12 and 13)

In May 2021, Human Rights Watch found that Yemen’s laws do not prohibit corporal punishment of students at school and permit violent discipline of children in the home:[28] article 146 of the Children’s Rights Act of 2002 confirms “the legal and legislative rights of parents to discipline their children.”[29]

Countries began to ban corporal punishment in the 1970s, as research showed it not only failed to improve children’s behavior but was also linked to increases in suicidal thoughts, anxiety, aggression, criminality, and other harms that impact the right to education. These include school avoidance and drop-outs, as well as difficulty with concentration,[30] cognitive problems, and increased aggression in school.[31] Medical associations have called for the abolition of corporal punishment on the basis that it harms students’ school achievement.[32]

This Committee, as well as the Committees on the Rights of the Child, and on Civil and Political Rights, have repeatedly called on Yemen to explicitly and effectively prohibit corporal punishment of children by law in all settings, including in schools. [33]

Recent reports on the prevalence of violent discipline in Yemen are unavailable, but a 2013 UNICEF survey found that around 90 percent of children aged 2-14 had experienced physical punishment by caregivers in the month prior to the survey, with more than 85 percent being subject to severe physical punishment, such as being “hit or slapped on the face, head or ears” or “beat up as hard as one could.”[34]

Houthi and Southern Transitional Council Areas

As of January 2021, eighty percent of Yemenis lived in territories where Houthi authorities exert control, including over schools.[35] The Houthi authorities did not reply to Human Rights Watch requests for information about laws or policies on violent discipline of children sent in early December of 2020.

The Southern Transitional Council, which controls territory in several Yemeni governorates,[36] also did not reply to our requests.

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Committee call on the government of Yemen to:

• Prohibit, by law, corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading forms of punishment in the home, at school, and in all alternative care settings where adults have authority over children.
• Ensure effective implementation and monitoring of ministerial decrees and decisions prohibiting the use of corporal punishment, and set out child-friendly complaints mechanisms as well as penalties for parents and guardians who engage in corporal punishment.