'Blackmail/hostage' dragnet ensnares UN aid workers in Yemen

It was already an awful enough season for humanitarian aid workers, who have faced death and abuse from Gaza to Sudan. During the past two weeks, Yemen’s Houthi rebels added another sorry chapter, detaining a group of 13 Yemeni United Nations aid workers whom they accused of acting as part of a U.S.-Israeli spy ring. The detentions are part of a broader reported sweep of a total of some 50 Yemeni employees of U.N. agencies, diplomatic missions, private companies, and international and nongovernmental organizations, according to the United States Mission to the United Nations. It follows the detention of four U.N. staff members in 2021 and 2023 who remain in custody. U.N. officials worry the dragnet is part of an intimidation campaign directed at the thousands of local workers who provide services to international organizations, fueling widespread panic and fear. It is also viewed as a bid to impose greater control over the aid communities’ distribution of billions of dollars in foreign assistance to Yemen, the lowest-income country in the Middle East. “Some in the humanitarian community are seeing it as a blackmail/hostage taking situation,” said a U.N. staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. “All national staff are understandably terrified.” The move comes on the heels of a longstanding dispute between the Houthis and the World Food Programme over the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in food aid in Houthi-controlled territory. In December, the U.N. food agency imposed a pause on food deliveries after the Houthis refused an agency plan to sharply cut out millions of food recipients, and balked at the idea to redirect aid to those the U.N. deemed most needy. “We are wading into unchartered, extremely dangerous territory,” said a U.N. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “This looks like a purge.” “They most likely want to gain leverage to control the U.N. agencies,” the U.N. official added. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres demanded the “immediate and unconditional release” of the detainees, which included local staffers from the U.N.’s food, development, children, and human rights agencies. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk denounced what he called “the outrageous allegations against U.N. staff.” “Humanitarian workers must never be a target, Tedros Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, tweeted. The heads of nine U.N. and international aid agencies, including the World Food Program, CARE, and the World Health Organization, on Thursday issued a joint statement warning the “unprecedented” actions “directly impede our ability to reach the most vulnerable people in Yemen, including 18.2 million people who need humanitarian aid and protection.” “The targeting of humanitarian, human rights, and development workers in Yemen must stop,” the statement said. “All those detained must be immediately released.” In the U.N. Security Council, the fate of the aid workers got somehow swept up in a geopolitical haymaker that pitted China and Russia against the United States and scores of other mostly Western nations. Beijing and Moscow blocked a bid by the U.K. to adopt a statement demanding the release of the detainees. During a council session, Russia’s U.N. ambassador Vassily Nebenzia expressed “alarm” over the detention of the 13 U.N. workers. But he also gave credence to the possibility that U.N. workers may have behaved inappropriately, saying “there is a need to get to the bottom of the circumstances behind what transpired before flinging accusations against any party.” He also implied that the U.N. would be applying a “double standard” in trying to impose demands on the Houthis while letting Israel off the hook for a military campaign that has resulted in the death of more than 200 aid workers. “We condemn these detentions, and we echo Secretary-General Guterres’ strong and clear call for the Houthis to release these detainees immediately,” Robert Wood, the U.S. ambassador responsible for security council matters, told the council. “We are disappointed that this council could not reach consensus in echoing the Secretary-General’s call.”