More than six years into what has been branded the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Yemeni civilians continue to suffer from grave violations of their fundamental human rights. This article argues that, while the current political context in Yemen has placed significant constraints on the Yemeni government's capacity to fulfil their human rights obligations, the Yemeni government and Saudi-led Coalition have ultimately failed in their more basic obligation to respect the rights of Yemeni civilians. Utilising the respect, protect, fulfil (RPF) framework, this article highlights that key actors prioritise their political aims of defeating the Houthi militia over their human rights obligations, particularly in relation to the rights of the child in Yemen.
Section I outlines the RPF framework. Section II applies the framework to Yemeni children’s right to life and right against forced conscription, highlighting the failure of the Coalition and the Yemeni government in upholding their fundamental responsibilities to respect and protect these rights. Section III explores a means of enforcing the Coalition’s obligation to adhere to their most fundamental duty of, at the very least, respecting the rights of the Yemeni child.
SECTION I - RESPECT, PROTECT, FULFIL AND THE RULES OF WAR
To truly understand the nature and degree of the human rights violations of Yemeni children, it is important to establish the responsibilities of the Yemeni government towards its citizens.
Christian Tomuschat explains that while all human rights treaties are binding on signatory parties, the degree of bindingness varies depending on the state’s political and economic capabilities. As such, governments have a rights-based duty towards their citizens under international human rights law to
(a) Respect: a negative duty in which states “must refrain from interfering with or curtailing the enjoyment of human rights”,
(b) Protect: in which states “must protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses by third-parties”,
(c) Fulfil: whereby states must “take positive action to facilitate the enjoyment of basic human rights”.
Having endured almost seven years of an ongoing civil war, Yemen is a country on its knees. While the Yemeni government may have a reduced capacity to proactively fulfil the rights of its citizens due to the devastating economic and social consequences of war—this does not dissolve them from their binding human rights obligations. Under the principle of “progressive realisation,” states must, in good faith, commit to the maximum possible realisation of these rights, ensuring that they do not fall below a minimum standard even when their capacity to proactively fulfil them are restrained.
Protocol VI of the 1949 Geneva Convention, to which Yemen and Saudi Arabia are both parties, unambiguously states that children should be afforded special protection in war. Moreover, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions 1612 (2005) and 1882 (2009) identify the killing of children and recruitment of child soldiers as two of the Six Grave Violations during armed conflicts. Put simply, even wars have rules. Adhering to these rules is not a matter of choice or capability, but rather a matter of moral responsibility and legal obligation, one which the Yemeni government and the Coalition violate.
SECTION II - THE RIGHT TO LIFE AND RIGHT AGAINST CONSCRIPTION
THE INHERENT RIGHT TO LIFE
After Yemen’s urgent call for the Security Council in March 2015 to “quickly intervene by land forces'' and for the Gulf States to provide their military assistance in defeating the illegitimate Houthi militia, the Saudi-led Arab coalition has been fighting what is often referred to as the “Saudi-Iranian Cold War” in a power struggle for regional dominance. Since the beginning of the conflict, multiple reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented the killing and maiming of Yemeni children on behalf of the Coalition through recurring air strikes on civilian infrastructure, such as schools. In 2017, the UN documented 38 attacks on schools and hospitals by the Saudi-led coalition, resulting in their placement on the Secretary General’s “list of shame” of gross violators of children’s rights. The 2018 Saudi bombing of a school bus in the Dahyhan market area, in which 41 children under the age of 14 were killed, has emerged as an emblem of Saudi apathy for the violations of Yemeni children’s lives. The 2019 annual report of the 42nd session of the Human Rights Council highlighted that as of 2018, 2,776 Yemeni children had been killed as a result of the conflict, the majority of which the Coalition are responsible for according to Antonio Gutteres, UN Secretary General.
Considering this in light of the RPF framework, the Saudi Coalition has fallen short at the very first pillar of respecting the Yemeni children’s right to life which merely constitutes a negative duty not to actively deny children their freedom to live. In recurrently targeting civilian areas and launching airstrikes on residential areas, schools, and school buses, the aforementioned parties’ actions go beyond an unfortunate reality of conflict, but rather they represent an active disregard or disrespect for the right to life that Yemeni children are entitled to.
This failure to respect Yemeni children’s right to life is exacerbated by the failure to conduct the necessary due diligence, such as identifying whether potential airstrike zones are in the vicinity of infrastructure built specifically for the purpose of children. In their quest of fulfilling their politically driven motivations of defeating the Houthis, a motivation which in and of itself may indeed be legitimate, the Coalition and the Yemeni government demonstrate negligence in verifying whether schools were being used as military bases. This indicates that in a system of priority, the possibility of political victory against the Houthis, however small and unfounded on evidence, supersedes their obligation to refrain from targeting civilian infrastructure under all circumstances.
However, one could argue that the Coalition’s airstrikes on schools are based on misinformation rather than specific intentions of denying the children of their right to life. Thus, targeting schools denotes a failure on only the “protect” and “fulfil” pillars rather than across the entire framework. However, the multiple recurrences of the Coalition’s airstrikes on schools without sufficient evidence that they were being used as Houthi military-bases indicates that the attacks were not isolated mistakes. As such, even taking the argument at its highest, the Coalition’s failure to verify its target locations before launching an attack represents an indifference for the loss of child life when striving to fulfil their political objectives, and hence a failure on the respect pillar as well.
THE RIGHT AGAINST CONSCRIPTION
As with the violation of the right to life, the recruitment of soldiers below the age of 15 is also considered one of the Six Grave Violations against children in armed conflicts. As parties to the CRC and the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions, the Saudi-led Coalition and the Yemeni government have a binding obligation to not only refrain from recruiting child soldiers, but also to defend them from being directly involved in the raging conflict. However, in 2018, the Coalition and the Yemeni government were responsible for the recruitment of at least 336 of child soldiers. The Coalition’s attempt to cut off military supplies to the Houthis by blockading key ports under Houthi control, such as the Hodeidah Port, pushes children into a profound state of desperation and search for any means of survival. This is because the ports are essential for importing food. When living under such circumstances, a “voluntary” offer of a well-paid position fighting on the frontlines seems like a welcome solution. Such exploitation of hundreds of desperate Yemeni children is precisely what has enabled the Coalition to recruit children, some as young as 13 years, to fight along the Saudi-Yemeni border to defend Saudi Arabia against Houthi advances. This indicates once again that the political will of the Coalition to restrict Houthi advances surpasses the rights and needs of Yemeni children.
Evaluating this violation more explicitly across the RPF framework further consolidates the assessment of the extent of violations committed by the Yemeni government and the Coalition against Yemeni children’s right not to be conscripted. In exploiting the poverty of children as a strategy of incentivising conscription, these key actors in the Yemeni war have demonstrated a clear disregard for their binding obligation to refrain from recruiting children below the minimum age of 15 as required by article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Moreover, on a more subtle note, the Yemeni government’s failure to criminalise the recruitment of child soldiers in its domestic law signifies a failure to defend, and hence protect, children against conscription for war. While Yemeni law bans the recruitment of child soldiers in line with the CRC and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which raises the age of recruitment from 15 to 18, such recruitment is not criminalised. This fails to engrain these rights into domestic law, thus representing a sense of government complacency and lack of accountability for those who violate this fundamental right. This indicates that not only have the Yemeni government and the Coalition failed on their more fundamental duty of respecting these rights during the conflict, but that the negligence of the Yemeni government to criminalise such acts also constitutes an additional failure in protection.
SECTION III - ENFORCING COMPLIANCE
Having established the deep implications of the Saudi-led Coalition and Yemeni government in the plight of the rights of Yemeni children, it is important to consider means of enforcing the Coalition’s compliance with their human rights obligations. Given that the UN Secretary General’s list of shame proved unsuccessful in halting the Coalition’s pervasive violations on the children’s rights, it is clear that a stronger, politically driven solution is needed. Hafner-Burton demonstrates the benefits of coercion in inducing states to commit to their fundamental human rights principles. Saudi Arabia imports billions of dollars’ worth of arms from key international players such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Thus, attaching strict human rights conditions to arms trade with Saudi as a form of “issue linkage” could incentivise the Coalition to comply with the minimum standards of children’s rights if they wish to continue enjoying the benefits of these arms deals.
Joe Biden’s recent announcement of the end of American support for Saudi Arabia in the ongoing war is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. After more than six years of war, the Saudi government has enjoyed impunity and a lack of accountability for its clear prioritisation of maintaining regional influence and power over succumbing to its binding human rights obligations. By enacting credible threats of revoking the deals if human rights violations persist, children rights can become a primary consideration in military operations, rather than a secondary benefit if fulfilled.
In conclusion, this article has demonstrated that the Yemeni government and its Saudi-led Coalition, have failed across the entire spectrum of the RPF framework of children’s rights during the on-going conflict. Through consideration of the right to life and the right against child conscription, this paper has highlighted that the rights of the child are considered secondary in the Coalition’s ultimate aim to realise its political incentive of defeating the Iranian-backed Houthi militia. This is exacerbated by the inherent nature of war which heightens the vulnerability of children. By placing human rights conditions on arms trade deals, however, Saudi Arabia’s primary arms exporters can indicate that the Coalition’s disregard of the right of the child will not pass without impunity. It is only by doing so that the children of Yemen may at least have their rights respected. This is paramount to ending the broad violations of the rights of children who most certainly did not start the war but have unfortunately been forced to bear the brunt of it.
Sarah is a third year undergraduate student studying BSc Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University College London. She has a keen interest in human rights - with a particular interest in Middle Eastern Affairs due to her Syrian origins.