It has been a week of setbacks for the fragile peace process in Yemen. On Friday the announced UN envoy to Yemen, a meeting between the warring parties on the fångutväxling ended without any agreement reached.
the Meeting between regeringssidan and huthierna was held in the Jordanian capital of Amman. The issue of exchange of prisoners was a key part of the UN-led peace talks on Yemen that was held in Johannesberg, north of Stockholm a month ago.
the long war has 15,000 soldiers and civilians taken as prisoners. They are incarcerated in squalid conditions. There have been reports of torture.
the Details of the fångutväxlingen would have been dealt with at a meeting in the Jordanian capital Wednesday and Thursday. But any decision to release the prisoners loose, it was never confirmed UN spokesperson Hanan al-Badawi on Friday to the news agency Ansa. al-Badawiu did not go into the detail of what parties have not managed to agree on.
another cornerstone of the so-called stockholm agreement on the Yemen with the local truce in the port city of Hodeidah as agreed between the parties. To Hodeidah shipped the bulk of the humanitarian aid to the krigssargade and distressed Yemen. But the unloading has been disrupted by the ongoing fighting, which has hit the civilian population hard, with hunger, and a surge in cases of deficiencies as a result.
Patrick Cammaert has been in place for Hodeidah since the christmas holidays for the UN mission to prepare an observer mission to monitor the ceasefire. That the work is both difficult and dangerous was the general was clear on Thursday, when his convoy was shot at, likely by huthiernas militia.
after all, the violence has decreased in Hodeidah the last few weeks. And after the meeting in Stockholm has a quarter of a million people in and around Hodeidah, provided access to emergency aid from the UN world food programme the World Food Programme.
But the needs are so glaring big, the weapons are so many and inconsistencies, so unforgiving that you have to be optimistic at the border of the misguided to talk about tangible achievements.
in Hodeidah gives a creepy echo of how it ended when the united nations placed the unarmed observers to Syria in the summer of 2012. The UN mission, including a group of swedes, would monitor a peace agreement, which the former UN chief, Kofi annan, with great effort, with effort negotiated.
But in the end ignored the parties in both the UN presence and the agreement. The fighting continued and the UN observers ended up in the crossfire and had to be evacuated. Syrienkriget entered a new, bloodier phase.
The best you can hope for that is the UN, helped in this sensitive location in the yemeni peace process. Both of the countries in the security council and of the parties directly or indirectly support the warring parties, such as saudi Arabia, the United arab Emirates and Iran.
