Why can't the United Nations bring peace to Yemen?

By 2011 the international community had concluded that the Saleh regime needed to be replaced by one which would both implement the neo-liberal economic agenda and focus on counter terrorism.

- Helen Lackner

Yemenis, speaking to journalists and other camera-bearing strangers, like many others facing disaster and the collapse of the world around them from war or environmental catastrophes, often ask ‘where is the International Community? Why isn’t the world helping us?’ While it is difficult to completely grasp what people in extreme distress mean by the phrase, for many the ‘international community’ is embodied in the United Nations and its institutions, ranging from political entities, primarily the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to its more independent development and humanitarian assistance organisations such as the World Food Programme, UNICEF, WHO etc…. But the UN has lost considerable credibility in recent years and its reputation has suffered as a result of many failures. Yemen is a case in point.

The roots of UN involvement: 2011-14

In Yemen, unlike other countries of what was optimistically called the Arab Spring, the UN’s political institutions have been actively involved since 2011. The popular movement opposing the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh had its own specificities: unlike the situation in Tunisia where the army was weak and in Egypt where it supported ending Mubarak’s rule, in Yemen the military effectively split. With fairly evenly matched forces on either side, clashes in 2011 left the country on the verge of a civil war.[1]