States should help pave the way towards credible accountability and redress for the people of Yemen by renewing and strengthening international investigations into war crimes, other serious violations of international humanitarian law, and grave human rights abuses during this 45th Session of the UN Human Rights Council (the Council), 24 organizations said today. Yemen is […]

In March 2020, Yemen marked the fifth anniversary of its armed conflict and braced for the new threats of COVID-19 to compound the situation facing the “world’s largest humanitarian crisis.” For a country that had previously endured the “triple tragedy” of cholera, famine, and deadly conflict, COVID-19 added to the long list of grave threats […]

On June 22, 2020, PHR joined 23 other human rights organizations to convey concerns about transparency and accountability in the 2020 Annual Report of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict Read the full letter here.

WASHINGTON, DC – More than 1,200 violent attacks and threats were perpetrated against health workers, medical facilities and transports, and patients in 20 conflict-affected countries in 2019, according to a new report published today by the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. The report – the most in-depth assessment of violence and threats to health care […]

On May 11, 2020, PHR joined 19 organizations to call upon the United Nations Secretary-General to name all perpetrators of grave violations involving children in the forthcoming annual report on children and armed conflict.

COVID-19 has come to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh   Health authorities confirmed on March 24 the first case of COVID-19 in Cox’s Bazar, adjacent to the teeming refugee camps where more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees have taken shelter since fleeing a campaign of widespread and systematic violence perpetrated by Myanmar security forces in late 2017.   […]

SANA’A/NEW YORK – Warring parties in Yemen have carried out at least 120 violent attacks on medical facilities and health workers, exposed by a joint investigation published today by Mwatana for Human Rights (Mwatana) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).  The attacks by the Saudi-Emirati-led coalition, internationally recognized government of Yemen, and Ansar Allah armed […]

Press release here Executive Summary For the past decade, Yemen has been wracked by multiple armed conflicts. The parties to these conflicts have flouted the most basic international laws and norms, including by disregarding the special protections afforded by international humanitarian law to medical facilities and personnel. A particularly destructive phase for Yemen began in […]

NEW YORK – The Trump administration’s announcement of plans to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan on an “emergency” basis will place untold numbers of Yemeni civilians at severe risk of death or maiming from unlawful deployment of that weaponry, says Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), based on its assessment […]

The Trump administration’s move on May 24 to authorize emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan is bad news for the already grievously suffering population of Yemen. The administration justifies those arms – including bombs, precision-guided munitions, drones, and repair and maintenance services for the Saudi air fleet – as […]

The Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition marked the four-year anniversary of its intervention in Yemen this week by bombing yet another hospital on Tuesday, March 26. A missile landed within 50 meters of Kitaf hospital, which is located in a densely populated area of northwest Yemen and is supported by the international organization Save the Children. […]

As humanitarian, human rights and peacebuilding organizations working on Yemen, we welcome tomorrow’s unprecedented coming together of legislators from across nations and parties for the first International Parliamentary Conference for Peace in Yemen to demand their governments work together to end the crisis. With 14 million men, women and children on the brink of famine […]

Amal Hussein, the seven-year-old emaciated Yemeni girl whose harrowing portrait drew the world’s attention to the largely overlooked humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Yemen, died from acute malnutrition on November 1 in a camp for the internally displaced. In her displacement, her illness, her hunger, and her tragic death, Amal embodies the perpetual suffering of Yemenis […]

Read the full newsletter here Summary June – Sept 2018 Since early June, a military offensive in al-Hudaydah has displaced 470,000 people, representing more than half of the city’s population. Failed September peace talks escalated tensions. In the days following the collapse of talks, government forces backed by the Saudi-Emirati-led coalition attemped to retake the […]

The conflict in Yemen, raging since 2015, has generated the worst humanitarian crisis in the world: tens of thousands of people have been killed or injured and nearly three quarters of the population depends on humanitarian assistance. By 2018, an estimated 50 percent of health care infrastructure had reportedly been destroyed by airstrikes and artillery […]

Read the full newsletter here >> Summary Feb – May 2018 Despite efforts to renew peace talks, the Yemen conflict reached its third anniversary in March 2018 and has left 22 million people in need of humanitarian aid, nearly 9,500 dead, 55,000 injured, and two million displaced over the past three years. As fighting intensified […]

War is the deliberate killing of people and destruction of infrastructure. Even so, more than half a century ago, world governments agreed on rules to ensure that war would not be purposefully destructive of those who do not fight. These rules, known as international humanitarian law, were designed to lessen civilian suffering, and carve out […]

For Immediate Release >>Read the full letter here. December 2017 marks 1000 days since the escalation of a war that has turned the Middle East’s poorest country into the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, leaving Yemen ravaged by preventable diseases and on the verge of a historic famine. Every ten minutes, a child dies from hunger […]

This article originally appeared in STAT on July 7, 2017. Barely two decades ago, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia first treated rape and sexual assault as distinct war crimes. That decision revolutionized our understanding of rape as a weapon of war, leading in 1997 to the first-ever prosecution of rape as a […]

A child in Yemen and a child in Syria. Separated by hundreds of miles, they share the experience of warfare – in Syria, a conflict that has churned along for over six years, in Yemen, a war that’s intensified since 2015. Children in both countries share an uncertain future, with the ever-present specter of illness, […]

When I visited Yemen last year, the situation was grim. The government was dealing with fuel shortages and protests against the lifting of subsidies. But, there was still hope. The airport and ports were functioning, the ministry of health was operational, and the minister of health was optimistic that the situation would improve for the […]

At the beginning of July, a Yemeni activist wrote on Twitter: “We in #Yemen are no strangers to war, but we've never witnessed anything like terror & desperation of past 100 days. We won't forget.” July 2 marked 100 days since the beginning of the intervention in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition to stamp out […]