UN extends sanctions on Yemen’s Houthis

The 15-member body adopted British-drafted Resolution 2675 on Wednesday, allowing sanctions measures of asset freeze and travel ban against certain Yemeni entities and individuals to continue until November 15, 2023.

The UNSC also decided to extend the mandate of the panel of experts monitoring the sanctions until December 15.

The council also voted to extend an arms embargo that has targeted Ansarullah leaders since February 2022, following retaliatory attacks by the Yemeni army and its aerial strikes on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Following the vote, the council met behind closed doors to hear briefings by Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, and Joyce Msuya, the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, to discuss the situation in the war-torn country.

During the meeting, Grundberg stated he was encouraged by intensified regional and international diplomatic activity to end Yemen’s eight-year conflict, and he reportedly followed up on those efforts.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.

The objective was to return to power the former Riyadh-backed regime and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.

The war has stopped well shy of all of its goals, despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and turning the entire Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.