Four years after the work of a team of international experts to investigate abuses committed by all parties to the conflict in Yemen came to an end, the idea of reconstituting such a body is resurfacing as the UN Human Rights Council prepares to convene its new session in Geneva this October, according to a report published by yemenonline.info.
The group’s mandate was cut short in 2021 following heavy political pressure from certain regional powers and allies of the warring factions.
Reconstituting The Yemen Experts Group, according to observers is driven by several factors:
Ongoing violations: indiscriminate shelling, arbitrary detention, child recruitment, and denial of humanitarian aid.
Lack of domestic accountability: Yemen’s judiciary and state institutions remain unable or unwilling to prosecute perpetrators.
International and rights-based pressure: organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International continue to push for an independent investigative mechanism.
Politicization of the Yemen file: with little progress at the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council is seen as an alternative arena for action.
While reinstating such a team would carry symbolic and legal weight, its effectiveness would depend on several critical factors:
Mandate: Will the new body be empowered to conduct thorough investigations and collect evidence, or will it be limited to monitoring and issuing general reports?
Independence: Can the Council shield it from political interference, the very obstacle that crippled the earlier group?
Impact on the ground: Even with a new mandate, field access and the ability to safely gather testimonies remain serious challenges.
Many observers argue that betting on yet another UN expert group is no longer effective, particularly given that past experiences failed to demonstrate transparency or impartiality.
Against this backdrop, strengthening Yemen’s National Human Rights Committee emerges as a more relevant and potentially effective option.
As a locally rooted mechanism, it is closer to victims’ realities and, with the right resources, could play a stronger role in documentation and accountability.
Instead of pouring UN budgets into costly teams and reports that rarely translate into tangible results, Yemeni observers suggest that empowering the national committee could yield more practical outcomes.
They added that such an approach could help establish genuine accountability and finally break the cycle of impunity.