Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2023, p. 55
Waging Peace
“YEMEN IN FOCUS” was the first of many panels addressing challenges facing the Arab world at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 31st Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC on Nov. 2-3.
U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Timothy Lenderking began by addressing ongoing peace efforts.
While the recently expired U.N.-mediated truce—which lasted from April 2 to Oct. 2—provided the Yemeni people with life-saving benefits and dramatically reduced civilian casualties, Lenderking stressed the need for an enduring peace plan originating within Yemen itself. “As the United States has said repeatedly, the future of Yemen lies in the hands of Yemenis,” he commented. “They are the ones who are going to make the key decisions about the disposition of their country.”
The parties to the conflict “can either build on this unprecedented period of calm and transition to a durable cease-fire and an inclusive political process or choose to return to a war that is crippling the country and robbing its people of a future,” Lenderking added.
Christopher Henzel, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, shared his view that the United States’ approach to Yemen is partly restrained by Washington’s relationship with other countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. “What we do in Yemen is contained or limited by these higher priorities,” he commented. “In other words, the U.S. in reality lacks the freedom to simply walk away from Yemen or to even…cut off arms sales to Saudi Arabia. I feel that is very unlikely to happen.”
The best way ahead is for the U.S. to continue encouraging the parties to maintain or renew the cease-fire, Henzel recommended, and to continue to encourage the Saudis in their direct engagement with the Houthis. “After all, in the end, only the Saudis can offer the monetary incentives that will be needed to persuade the Houthis to compromise,” he said.
Sarah Charles of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance conveyed the United States’ continued humanitarian support for Yemenis.
Despite the relief provided by the truce, Yemenis’ needs continue to grow at an alarming rate and the humanitarian crisis in the country remains one of the worst in the world, she said. Nearly 75 percent of the population requires humanitarian assistance to just meet basic needs. “Nineteen million Yemenis are in need of food assistance and more than two million young children face deadly malnutrition,” she noted.
Highly fortified nutritional products that support the most malnourished children under the age of five are particularly needed, Charles related. “[Humanitarian] interventions can work quite quickly to restore children from really being at death’s door to thriving,” she said. “But if [malnutrition is] not treated, this impacts their brain development, their ability to learn and grow much later in life.”
The threat of renewed conflict will only further strain an already stretched aid operation, and the U.N.’s humanitarian appeal for Yemen is only 48 percent funded. The United States has provided more than $1 billion this year alone, which accounts for more than half of all contributions made by donors. “We are the top donor by far,” she stated. “Every month food provided by the United States reaches 13 million vulnerable people in Yemen.”
David Des Roches, associate professor in the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, summed up the global food crisis. “If you have a food crisis, you have political instability,” he said. “This hunger situation is real, and it will lead to political instability, and it is much bigger than Yemen, although Yemen is one of the worst cases.”
—Elaine Pasquini
