Human Rights Watch Critiques Yemen War Investigations

The investigations conducted by the Saudi-led coalition

into war crimes committed in Yemen lack

credibility and have not done justice to civilian victims.

This is what Human Rights Watch said, referring to

the investigations that the Saudi-Emirati coalition had pledged

to conduct into airstrikes that targeted civilians.

The organization’s report has reignited the debate that accompanied more than one

Saudi-Emirati coalition airstrike in which civilians were killed,

the latest of which targeted a bus carrying children at

a popular market in Saada Governorate, killing

more than fifty people, most of them children.

The angry reactions of the international community

at the time were accompanied by bewilderment over the vicious cycle

in which the world finds itself, between killing,

condemnation, promises to investigate, and placating outrage.

The Security Council’s call for the coalition to conduct

a credible, transparent investigation and hold the perpetrators

of crimes against civilians accountable was no guarantee of an investigation

justice, nor preventing the repeated targeting of civilians.

A few hours earlier, displaced civilians were killed in the district of

Al-Durayhimi, south of the city of Hodeidah in western Yemen,

in an airstrike the Saudi-Emirati coalition is accused

of carrying out. Human Rights Watch went

beyond merely questioning the outcome of the Saudi-Emirati coalition's investigations

and their credibility. It said the leaders of this

coalition face criminal responsibility for dozens of

airstrikes whose circumstances were buried with the victims, as

the report submitted to the Security Council calls for the imposition of

targeted sanctions on senior leaders of the

coalition. The organization said the purported investigations

provide no cover for those who sell

weapons to Saudi Arabia. It said U.S. officials

could face criminal accountability,

as logistical support for the coalition could make the United

States complicit in violating the laws of war.

The cycle of killing and cover-ups, as international organizations see it, cannot

be ended by a mere promise. And it was

The deputy director of Human Rights Watch

previously said that the sad truth is

that the Saudis were given the chance to

conduct their own investigation, and the results were laughable.