HRW: Saudi Forces Kill, Torture Migrants in Yemen

Authors of the report Lama Faikh and Nadia Hardman cited recent communications from several United Nations experts to the Saudi government.

They accused Saudi security force of killing some 430 migrants and wounding 650 others in cross-border shelling and shooting between January and April 2022. Captured migrants were tortured and girls as young as 13 were reportedly raped, the report said.

The UN experts warned that women and girls are at risk of sexual violence by smugglers who, in collaboration with the Yemen Immigration, Passport, and Nationality Authority, extort migrants. They added that migrants who are placed in camps are subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and other forms of abuse.

Those who fail to pay smuggling fees or submit to exploitation are reportedly detained or forcibly returned to southern Yemen, the report said.

According to the International Organization for Migration, over 43,000 migrants are stranded throughout Yemen. Most migrants passing through Yemen come from Ethiopia, including refugees and asylum seekers fleeing an ongoing civil war that has killed thousands and displaced millions.

“Migrants transiting through Yemen are among the civilians most affected by the [Yemen] conflict,” the HRW report said, pointing to a 2021 fire at a Houthi-controlled retention center that left “scores of African migrants” dead.

Hardman and Faikh said that in 2021, the UN Human Rights Council shuttered the only international and independent body probing abuses by parties in the Yemen conflict, following “heavy arm-twisting from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

They called on the UN to establish a monitoring and investigation mechanism to gather evidence of “possible war crimes by all sides.”