Part II Situations of Armed Conflict in 2014, Situations of Armed Conflict in 2014, Armed conflict in Yemen in 2014

Subject(s):

Military assistance — Armed conflict, international — Armed conflict, non-international — Belligerence — Belligerents — Humanitarian intervention — Armed forces

This chapter examines the ongoing armed conflict in Yemen between the armed forces of Yemen and the Houthi rebels in the North and with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in the South. All parties to the conflict are bound by customary international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights law, as Yemen is a state party to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions and to other various international treaties. The conflict originates in the 1990s when Husain al-Houthi founded the Believing Youth movement, which eventually became the Houthis, to counter growing fundamentalist Sunni trends. The conflict began as isolated clashes between the Believing Youth movement (Houthis) and the army in Sa'da. On the other hand, hostilities against AQAP began in May of 2014 following two attacks which killed around 50 people. According to the key casualty data provided by the Abaad Studies and Research Center, over 7,000 people were killed in 2014 due to armed clashes.