On Friday 27 March, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service welcomed the announcements from the Yemeni government and the Ansar Allah that they were moving towards calming the situation.
The government of Yemen, supported by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, has accepted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s call for a global ceasefire in order to fight the current coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, the Ansar Allah movement has signalled its willingness to engage in de-escalation and to negotiate a comprehensive political agreement.
“These are welcome steps in the right direction”, said the EEAS spokesperson, while noting that the war in Yemen has been raging for more than five years.
“The additional imminent threat now posed by the spread of coronavirus makes it even more imperative for the parties to lay down arms and join forces for a common cause”, he said. Although no cases of Covid-19 infection have yet been recorded, NGOs are concerned about a potential disaster if the epidemic were to reach the country. More than three million displaced people live crammed into camps and the country has a shortage of everything.
The EU therefore expects the parties to engage constructively with Martin Griffiths, the UN Special Envoy, in setting up appropriate confidence-building mechanisms to this end.
On 26 March, Griffiths said he was “encouraged to see positive responses to the Secretary-General's call for a ceasefire from both the Government of Yemen and Ansar Allah”, and called on the parties to meet urgently “in a spirit of cooperation and compromise” to discuss how to put into practice the commitments they have made to the Yemeni people. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)