UN envoy warns Yemen is closer to full-scale war than at any time since the 2022 truce
Yemen Herald News 
The United Nations Security Council held an open session on Yemen on 13 August at which its senior officials in the country delivered their bleakest assessment in years, warning that the war spreading across the Middle East has reached Yemen’s coastline and that the calm which has held since 2022 is now visibly breaking down.
Hans Grundberg, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, told the 15-member Council that Yemen faces a more serious risk of a return to large-scale conflict than at any point since the truce mediated by the United Nations in 2022. He said intensifying military activity along the front lines, together with attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, risked pulling the country into what he called the vortex of the wider regional war.
He recounted a run of incidents from July that changed the picture. An unauthorised flight from Tehran towards Sanaa was followed by air strikes on Sanaa’s airport, missile attacks on Abha airport and strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. This week, he noted, a Houthi missile attack on a commercial vessel killed several crew members.
For four years, and well beyond its formal expiry, the truce kept Yemen’s front lines relatively quiet, Grundberg said, giving civilians respite even as the region convulsed after 2023. But the arrangement was always designed as a means rather than an end, intended to open the way to negotiations on a comprehensive settlement. A return to large-scale fighting now would arrive at an unforgiving moment, with state institutions fragmented, the economy unstable and the region already at war.
Drawing on meetings with representatives of both sides in recent weeks, he said the government and the Houthis must de-escalate immediately and work towards a ceasefire. He argued that economic de-escalation is urgently needed and that resuming oil exports under appropriate security guarantees would provide a critical source of income for recovery. He said he remained convinced that a negotiated off-ramp is possible, and called on the Houthis to release the 73 United Nations personnel still arbitrarily detained alongside colleagues from non-governmental organisations.
The humanitarian briefing was delivered by Tom Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, who told members that even during the calmer years millions of Yemenis have faced impossible daily choices between food and medicine, education and labour, survival and displacement.
The burden falls disproportionately on women and girls, he said. Nearly 11 million require humanitarian support, four out of five women lack access to life-saving reproductive health services, and an estimated three women die every day from preventable complications related to pregnancy. In Marib, authorities have declared a health emergency in response to a measles outbreak. Across the country, 6 million people are experiencing emergency levels of deprivation, the highest number recorded anywhere in the world, and a threshold that sits immediately below famine conditions.
Fletcher urged the Council not to let the scale of those figures dull its response. Humanitarian agencies continue to deliver despite movement restrictions and violence against staff, he said, reaching an average of 5.3 million people a month during 2025. But funding shortages driven by geopolitical uncertainty and a loss of donor confidence have now crippled operations. With this year’s appeal barely 20 per cent funded, he said the arithmetic is simple: cuts mean fewer rations, closed clinics and services that disappear altogether. He asked donors for flexible, predictable funding and pressed Council members not to lose focus.
Member states filled in further detail. The United Kingdom’s Deputy Permanent Representative, Ambassador Kate Foster, said more than 22 million people in Yemen require humanitarian assistance, more than 18 million face food insecurity and more than 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished. She noted that Yemen’s heavy dependence on imported food and fuel leaves it exposed to further shocks, and that the Food and Agriculture Organization has warned of drought risks and worsening food insecurity. Britain provided more than 180 million dollars for life-saving assistance last year.
The maritime escalation that prompted the session has direct humanitarian consequences. Yemen imports the overwhelming majority of its food and fuel through the waters now being fought over, so attacks that raise the cost and risk of moving cargo through Bab al-Mandab feed through to prices in domestic markets. The strike on the cargo vessel Tihamah on 11 August, which Pakistan’s representative said killed three Pakistani crew members and one Indonesian, was condemned by the head of the International Maritime Organization as an indefensible attack on international shipping.
Positions diverged on cause. The United States, the United Kingdom, France and Bahrain pointed to Iranian support for the Houthis. Russia argued that stagnation in the peace process had drawn the group into a confrontation initiated by Washington and Israel, and called for negotiations to resume. China said the Yemeni file must be read within the wider regional picture. Speaking for the African members, Liberia warned that Yemen must not become a theatre for broader confrontation, saying its future must be written by Yemeni hands.
Yemen’s own representative told the Council that condemnations matter but must be matched by tangible action, including measures to halt the smuggling of weapons and military technology to the Houthis. No new Council product was announced at the close of the meeting.
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