ADEN (Reuters) -The United Nations has relocated the place of appointment of the resident coordinator for Yemen to Aden, more than a week after at least 18 U.N. personnel were detained in the capital Sanaa.
The resident coordinator’s office for Yemen said on Tuesday that the office location was changed to Aden, but that the resident coordinator would continue to fulfill his mandate across the country.
“The Resident Coordinator maintains a presence in Sanaa and he will be traveling across the country, including to Sanaa,” the office said.
The foreign ministry of the Aden-based government earlier on Tuesday welcomed the U.N.’s decision, calling on the body’s other programmes to follow suit.
“The Ministry reiterates its strongest condemnation of the continued arbitrary detention of dozens of humanitarian workers by the Houthi militia and calls for their immediate and unconditional release,” it added.
The U.N. previously said that Houthi rebels raided its premises in Sanaa on August 31 and detained U.N. staff, following an Israeli strike that killed the prime minister of the Houthi-run government and several other ministers.
Yemen’s Houthi-run Foreign Ministry said UN officials’ legal immunities should not shield espionage activities.
Before the recent detentions, the Houthis were already holding 23 U.N. personnel, some since 2021. Another U.N. staff member died while in Houthi custody in February.
Yemen has been split between a Houthi administration in Sanaa and a Saudi-backed government in Aden since the Iran-aligned Houthis seized Sanaa in late 2014, triggering a decade-long conflict.
The UN’s World Food Programme said in a statement on Tuesday that the recent escalations by the Houthis were “intolerable,” adding: “The arbitrary detention of WFP and United Nations staff members, forced entry into UN offices, destruction and seizure of property, and coerced actions against national staff are unacceptable and have severely compromised the ability of WFP and other UN and humanitarian organizations to reach vulnerable communities in northern Yemen.” It called for the release of all aid workers.
(Reporting by Jaidaa Taha and Menna Alaa El-Din in Cairo, and Mohammed Ghobari in Aden; Additional reporting by Alvise Armellini in Rome; Writing by Jaidaa Taha; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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