Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, CIVICUS: Global Alliance and another 21 Arab and Yemeni non-government organizations urgently call on the international community, in particular those states with an established communication channel with the Houthi rebels, to do everything in their power to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of all those who have been arbitrarily detained, including human rights and humanitarian workers.
In a joint statement those organizations demanded the Houthis to immediately release at least eight UN staff who were arbitrarily detained between January 23 and 25, 2025, as well as dozens of staff from UN agencies and Yemeni and international civil society organizations who continue to be arbitrarily detained since May 2024.
The 24 organizations’ joint statement considered the latest wave of arrests as part of the Houthis’ ongoing crackdown on human rights and humanitarian workers, which intensified last year, when on May 31, 2024, for over two weeks the Houthis conducted a series of raids in areas under their control, arbitrarily detaining 13 UN staff and at least 50 staff from Yemeni and international civil society organizations, without access to a lawyer or their families and without charge.
The joint statement mentioned that the office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen confirmed the arrests in a statement published on January 24, 2025, noting that seven UN staff members, including personnel from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, had been detained. UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the arrests, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all detained individuals.
The statement confirmed that since 2015, several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and the Gulf Center for Human Rights have documented scores of cases involving journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents and members of religious minorities who had been subjected to unfair trials before Houthi-controlled courts, and in all these cases, the Houthis’ prosecution authorities appeared to have brought the spying charges as means to persecute political opponents and silence peaceful dissent.