The Yemeni government and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) are failing to fulfill Aden residents’ right to electricity and water, according to Human Rights Watch.
A recent HRW report noticed that “since the start of the conflict in Yemen, the residents of Aden, the largest city in southern Yemen and the provisional capital of the Yemeni government since 2015, have experienced frequent and increasingly common restrictions on, and shutoffs of, water and electricity”.
These shutoffs according to HRW negatively affect residents’ rights to health, education, and other rights essential for adequate standard of living, including adequate housing, safe and sufficient water, and adequate sanitation.
“Yemen’s government and the Southern Transitional Council have an obligation to provide access to adequate water and electricity in Aden,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “
In the nine years since the conflict began, the availability and accessibility of safe water and sufficient electricity has worsened in the city. “Since 2015, we have been suffering and it’s only getting worse,” one Aden resident told Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch spoke with 26 people, some of them internally displaced, living in a small village near the city center, and with the government, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations, about access to water and electricity and government support. Human Rights Watch also interviewed people in various neighborhoods and collected evidence of water and electricity shortages in various areas of the city.
Several people interviewed said that before the war began in 2014, Aden residents had a comprehensive, regular, and affordable supply of electricity and water. Now, many residents only get water from the public network once every two or three days, or not at all.
In July and August 2023, the government-run electricity producer was only able to provide power for about four to six hours a day for many city residents. Still, this was an improvement from June, when publicly supplied electricity was only available for about two or three hours a day, leaving many households without adequate air conditioning in sweltering heat. Summer temperatures in Aden average between 27 and 36 degrees Celsius (81 and 96 degrees Fahrenheit) and regularly soar above 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), in addition to 65 percent average humidity. The situation regularly produces a heat index dangerous to human health especially for children, the elderly, and those with chronic diseases.