Girls stand outside a tent for internally displaced people IDPs in a camp in Marib city, Yemen, October 16, 2021, on the outskirts of Marib city, Yemen. GENEVA, Dec 2 Reuters Activist groups called for a new panel of independent experts to collect and preserve evidence of possible war crimes by all sides in Yemen's bitter conflict for future prosecution.
In October, Bahrain, Russia and other members of the UN Human Rights Council pushed through a vote to shut down its war crimes investigations in Yemen, a stinging defeat for Western states. Some 60 groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have called for a new investigation and accused Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of an aggressive lobbying campaign to quash the Geneva-based expert panel set up four years ago.
More than 100,000 people have been killed and 4 million have been displaced in the war marked by Saudi-led coalition air strikes and missiles by Iran-aligned Houthi fighters.
In March 2015, the Saudi-led Sunni Muslim coalition intervened in Yemen after the Houthis removed the internationally recognized government from power in Sanaa, the capital.
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said that parties to the conflict in Yemen, including Saudi Arabia and Houthi forces, have committed atrocities with impunity for too long.
She said that the United Nations had failed the Yemeni people who have endured years of widespread-documented suffering.
Callamard said bullying and bribing and corruption of the system has won the day. Saudi Arabia and the UAE shamelessly and aggressively lobbied states through their capital cities and got rid of the Group of Eminent Experts. The Saudi government communications centre did not respond to requests for comment.
There is a vacuum of accountability in Yemen. Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that the Saudi government killed the one existing mechanism.
This is something that needs to be done quickly, because we would like to see the General Assembly action within the next month or two. Saudi officials had bribed, coerced and arm-twisted member states of the Human Rights Council, defeating the resolution, Roth said.
The groups didn't offer proof of the bribery and bullying allegations.
But Roth, echoing comments by Western diplomats in Geneva, said Saudi officials had warned Indonesia and possibly other Muslim majority countries that they should vote against the probe if they want their nationals to have access to the Haj pilgrimage in Mecca.