UK charity regulator warns Save the Children over failures at its Yemen office
Yemen Herald News 
LONDON, United Kingdom — Britain’s charity regulator has issued Save the Children an official warning over management failures it said put staff at the organisation’s Yemen office at serious risk.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales closed a two-year investigation into the running of the office with the warning.
Weak governance meant staff were not properly safeguarded in response to what the commission called a live security concern, the regulator said.
Incidents of poor conduct by staff were not addressed, it said.
The warning letter refers to substantial policy breaches and a lack of accountability at the office, according to the commission.
Managers in Yemen failed to assess complaints and whistleblower reports properly, or to escalate them, the regulator said.
The commission issues official warnings when it decides that a breach of trust or mismanagement has put a charity’s staff or the people it serves at risk.
The power comes from section 75A of the Charities Act 2011, which covers a breach of trust or duty, or misconduct and mismanagement.
The commission does not have to open a statutory inquiry to use it, and must give advance notice of its intention to do so.
A warning is not a direction, and the regulator cannot use one to order trustees to take a particular step.
The notice has to set out the grounds for the warning and any remedial action that would address it.
Failure to remedy a breach set out in a warning can be treated as evidence of mismanagement if the commission later considers stronger powers under section 76 of the same act.
Save the Children International is registered as a charity in England and Wales, which places it under the commission’s jurisdiction.
The investigation began after the death of Hisham al-Hakimi, the organisation’s safety and security director in Yemen.
Al-Hakimi’s job was to manage risk to staff in the country.
He told colleagues in late August 2023 that he believed he was in danger of being detained, The New Humanitarian reported.
He was detained in Sanaa on 9 September that year while off duty, Save the Children said at the time.
No charges were filed and no reason for the arrest was given, according to the organisation.
He died on 25 October 2023, still held.
His family, his legal representatives and the charity’s own teams were unable to see or speak to him at any point, Save the Children said.
Sanaa has been under Houthi control since 2014. The group’s authorities have not published findings on the death.
Save the Children called at the time for an immediate, independent and transparent investigation.
Britain, the European Union and 25 international organisations made the same request, Arab News reported.
In a statement to the Guardian, Save the Children International said it had made changes under new leadership in Yemen since 2024.
Those covered oversight, support for staff and rebuilding trust, the charity said.
It has closed its office in northern Yemen because of security concerns, it added.
The charity said conditions in the country meant it might never establish what happened to al-Hakimi, or why.
Save the Children suspended work in Houthi-controlled areas after the death. It said in 2024 that nearly two thirds of its Yemen programmes remained suspended.
An earlier suspension after the death lasted about 10 days. The programmes halted then accounted for more than 65 per cent of the organisation’s work in the country, it said.
The charity said it had reached 1.8 million people in Yemen in the preceding year, among them 1.1 million children.
The New Humanitarian published a summary of the organisation’s internal investigations into its Yemen operation in March 2025.
Detentions of aid workers have continued since.
Human Rights Watch said 73 United Nations staff remained in Houthi detention as of February 2026, all of them Yemeni nationals.
The campaign began with raids from 31 May 2024, when 13 UN staff and at least 50 staff of Yemeni and international organisations were taken, the group said.
Seven had been released by June 2026, according to Human Rights Watch.
A UN aid worker died in Houthi custody in early 2025. Amnesty International called that February for an independent inquiry.
Human Rights Watch documented further deaths in Houthi detention and what it called unfair trials in a report in November 2024.
The organisation said in January 2026 that the detentions were halting aid delivery.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies have all called for the release of the detained staff.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned the detentions and demanded that those held be freed.
Aid agencies say staff in Houthi-held areas have limited their movements and their work for fear of arrest.
Yemen remains one of the largest relief operations in the world.
More than 22 million people need humanitarian assistance, according to the UN humanitarian needs and response plan published in March 2026.
The plan puts the number of acutely food insecure at 18.3 million and the number of people displaced inside the country at 5.2 million.
More than 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished, it says, 516,157 of them severely.
The appeal seeks 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
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