2. The Role of the United Nations in the Yemen Crisis

This chapter examines the political role of the United Nations in the Yemen crisis between 2011 and 2019, focusing on the Security Council, the Secretary General’s Special Envoys, and the Department of Political Affairs. There were two phases, the first between 2011 and the outbreak of the internationalized war in 2015 when the UN was deeply involved in the country’s domestic politics during the Gulf Cooperation Council-sponsored transitional regime: then, it could have performed better by taking a broader view of the country’s major problems but, instead, focused on the National Dialogue Conference, failing to address other major developments. In the second phase, during the war, the unwillingness of the warring parties to seek peace prevented the UN from playing an effective mediating role. As elsewhere, the UN structure and its lack of enforcement tools prevented it from playing the supra-national role which would enable it to solve problems in the interests of populations at large.