Yemen:  The war in Yemen calls for a redefinition of international law, and whether the world needs international rules regulating relations between states at the present time.

According to international law, Yemen is a sovereign state, and it is a member of the United Nations. In no way can it be the target of bombing with weapons of mass destruction, or the imposition of a blockade that leads to creating a state of mass death among civilians.

The truth is that the war waged by the US-Saudi aggression against Yemen is entirely taking place outside international law, international humanitarian law and humanitarian norms. The pretext of the “coup” adopted by the US-Saudi aggression is an excuse for war and the killing of civilians. It cannot be used to justify war according to international law.

The catastrophic war that Yemen is facing is a precedent that has never happened before. Never before have nearly 400,000 civilians been killed and the infrastructure of a country destroyed because a coup overthrew the ruling elite in that country, regardless of whether that ruling elite had enough popular support!

Usually, the United Nations takes certain measures to protect the ruling authority in the country, on the condition that it meets the required international standards to respect these elites, such as popular support, It is a criterion that was not met by the resigned president in Yemen, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by the same coalition that came under the pretext of restoring him to power in Yemen.

The overthrow of Hadi did not lead to an end to the war and siege in Yemen, which is another paradox added to the track record that exposes the deadly policy of expediency that is being pursued by the international community and international institutions in the United Nations, led by the Security Council.

Despite the failure of the aggression to impose what it announced in Yemen, and the serious violations it committed in the Yemeni areas it controls, the United Nations and the Security Council are still, after eight years of war, in the same policy of blindness towards what is happening in Yemen of crimes. It is as if the superpowers do not mind the Yemen war continuing indefinitely. Or in other words, as if the war on Yemen came to finish off the remnants of the illusions of international law in the minds of the international community.

The truth is that the major powers, led by the United States, no longer use international law except to the extent they need to impose their interests, without any regard for the interests of other countries.

With the World Human Rights Day, Yemenis find themselves a new example of the fact that the world lives in an era in which standards of power and domination prevail, at the expense of all the principles that humanity has tried to accumulate. What Yemen is exposed to can be repeated, and the pretexts used by the forces of colonial domination, far from logic, to kill the people of Yemen, will be recycled again against other countries, after the principles of law were dropped by the United States and replaced by standards of force to overthrow international law and human norms.

Source: YPA, translated by Almasirah English website