Yemen

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

The question we face relates to the situation in Yemen, and there is a short answer to it: it is appalling. Even before the outbreak of the current, hugely destructive three-way civil war, conditions in Yemen were terrible and getting worse. Yemen has an overwhelmingly subsistence economy, where the majority of the population relies on agriculture for their survival, but water—that most basic and fundamental of commodities—is literally running out. In the 1970s, groundwater could be found at a depth of 30 metres in the Sana’a basin—deep enough, one might think—but now it has retreated to a depth of 1,200 metres, so people have to go more than a kilometre deep before they find water. Without war, without corruption, without lawlessness and without maladministration, this is an existential crisis in its own right, but war and corruption and lawlessness and mal- administration have further exacerbated the problem, as failed-state cash crops, notably khat, have displaced domestic agriculture and are now responsible for a staggering 40% of all water use.

The current political instability was sparked by a general and popular revolt against the coercive and kleptocratic Government of President Saleh—the corruption, the state theft, the authoritarianism and the attempt to change the constitution so that he could become, effectively, president for life. It is a tragedy that the green shoots of the Arab spring that forced President Saleh from office and installed President Hadi in his place have been trampled by the factional insurgency of the Houthis in the north, with the resulting descent into civil war.

Others in this debate have highlighted the massive humanitarian crisis that has unfolded in Yemen over the last decade, together with the substantial failure of the international community in funding and then implementing a sufficient humanitarian response. There is so much need and it is immediate. For my part, while I fully endorse the urgency of the need for immediate humanitarian assistance, I want to focus on the longer-term solutions to the current devastation, since we all know that the only real way to protect the population of Yemen is by a political accommodation to the conflict.

To pretend that the conflict does not have the established characteristics of a wider proxy war would be disingenuous. The involvement of Iran in supporting the Houthi rebels and the resulting Arab coalition, led by Saudi Arabia in support of the Government, has intensified the conflict, and yet it would be a mistake to conclude that there is therefore an equivalence between the parties. We are members of the United Nations. We are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and it is the United Nations that has recognised the Government of President Hadi as the legitimate Government of Yemen. That is important and it makes a difference. A state has the right—it has the obligation—to defend itself within the international rules of law.

The Stockholm agreement in 2018, as well as the more recent Riyadh agreement, have provided us with the first glimmers of hope. Local ceasefires, humanitarian corridors, prisoner swaps and, crucially, the agreement to continue talks by the parties must surely be the framework through which the conflict can eventually be drawn to a close. I believe that the Government have adopted the right strategy of heavy diplomatic engagement in the region. We cannot force peace on the warring parties, but we can work to create the conditions where the parties can choose peace, and we must continue to do so.