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Targeting Infrastructure, Health, and Civilians in the Yemen War
Abstract
This paper analyzes the targeting of civilian and environmental infrastructures in the Yemen conflict since 2015, focusing on the interlinked effects on civilian health and welfare from the targeting of water, energy, and agriculture, and the changing role of humanitarian actors in this protracted conflict. This paper is part of a broader project exploring changing practices of warfare and humanitarian action in the post-2011 wars in the Middle East and North Africa. The Yemen case is particularly important as it represents an extreme instance of conflict-induced spread of disease and man-made famine. It poses significant challenges to both the on-the-ground operations and basic assumptions of humanitarian organizations, as well as the norms and practices of international humanitarian law. Since the Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, the UK, and France, intervened militarily in the Yemeni civil war, civilian infrastructure ranging from markets to oil refineries to agricultural lands have been targeted both directly and indirectly. Several scholarly reports suggest that aerial bombardment has destroyed civilian infrastructure not as ‘collateral’ damage from targeting military targets but as a deliberate strategy to undermine livelihoods and income, thereby inducing widespread disease, malnutrition and looming famine in areas under the control of the Houthi government and its allies. The 2016-2018 cholera outbreak, in particular, was the largest and most rapid spread of cholera ever recorded by the World Health Organization (WHO), with over a million cases reported. This paper uses data from multiple sources to analyze the role of targeting civilian infrastructure by parties to the conflict; humanitarian response efforts; and the contradictions between great power behavior and norms of humanitarianism. These sources include an original database compiled by the authors that tracks targeting by actor, infrastructure targeted, and location; the Yemen Data Project, compiled by Yemeni activists and journalists tracking coalition airstrikes; and exploratory work with geospatial scientists using satellite imagery analysis to asses conflict-destruction of infrastructure. We also draw upon WHO data, reports from Yemeni ministries, and interviews with humanitarian organizations that remain in Yemen.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Yemen
Sub Area
Human Rights