- Houthi authorities have arbitrarily detained at least 69 UN staff and dozens of civil society staff over the last 18 months and have not provided them with due process.
- The Houthis’ stepped-up detentions of civil society and UN agency members risk increasing the humanitarian aid crisis in Yemen, already one of the worst situations in the world.
- It is imperative for the UN, independent groups working in Yemen, and concerned governments to take every action in their power to ensure the release of those detained.
(Beirut) – The Houthis’ stepped-up detentions of civil society and United Nations agency members has contributed to increasing the humanitarian aid crisis in Yemen, already one of the worst situations in the world, Human Rights Watch said today.
As of January 4, 2026, at least 69 UN staff, all Yemeni nationals, have been arbitrarily detained, along with dozens of Yemeni staff of international and local nongovernmental organizations, with many facing baseless accusations of espionage. In recent months, the Houthis also raided the UN Common Accommodation Facility in Sanaa, and the offices of several UN agencies, international nongovernmental organizations, and local civil society organizations, in some cases taking their equipment.
“The Houthis are detaining aid workers who are providing lifesaving support to the Yemeni people while failing to provide for the basic needs of those living in their territories,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They should immediately release the dozens of people they have arbitrarily detained and end their continued obstruction of aid delivery.”
The Houthis’ detentions of UN and civil society staff is occurring while hunger levels are worsening in Yemen. In their latest global report on hunger, the World Food Programme (WFP) and UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warned: “The already critical acute food insecurity situation is expected to deteriorate further over the outlook period [November 2025 to May 2026], with pockets of the population projected to face Catastrophe” in four districts under Houthi control.
Human Rights Watch spoke to 36 people, including family and friends of those detained, aid workers, diplomats, and lawyers and activists familiar with the cases. Human Rights Watch also reviewed social media posts by several detainees’ family members regarding their loved ones.
Several sources said that the Houthis’ actions had meant that the UN could not carry out their work in full due to the risks their staff face in Houthi-controlled territories. They said UN staff could not go into their offices or move around freely for fear of being arrested, affecting their ability to provide aid.
In many cases, Yemenis working for the UN, international groups, civil society, and diplomatic missions have fled Houthi-controlled territories to areas of southern Yemen or abroad as a result of the Houthis’ wide-sweeping arrest campaign.
In July 2024, prior to the UN suspension of activities in one region and the US designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization, 15 UN and other aid groups were operating across 14 districts in the governorate, with 26 programs working on food security and nutrition, water and sanitation, health, and shelter. In July 2025, there were just two organizations working in three districts of the governorate on health and nutrition.
In November 2022, the last time the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC, the world’s foremost experts on food insecurity) reported on Houthi-controlled territories prior to 2025, the IPC projected that 63 percent of the population of Saada was in the crisis levels of food insecurity or above, with the vast majority of those in need classified as being in IPC Phase 3 (crisis level). In June 2025, the IPC’s map of Saada had been inverted: the majority of the population was projected to be in IPC Phase 4 (emergency), with a smaller portion in IPC Phase 3.
The Houthis’ arrests have negatively affected the ability of aid organizations to provide aid to people in Houthi-controlled territories, despite the severe and increasing needs.
In October, Abdulwahid Abu Ras, the Houthis’ acting foreign minister, told Reuters that the Houthis support humanitarian provision, and will “assist organizations committed to the principles of humanitarian work, facilitating their activities and work.”
Most sources working at aid organizations have contradicted that statement, saying that the arrest campaign and the raids have severely impacted their ability to work.
Furthermore, the Houthis have occupied UN agency offices, as well as the UN Common Accommodation Facility in Sanaa (UNCAF), the residential compound where many international UN staff were living. They have taken equipment, including laptops, routers, and other devices from UN agencies as well as nongovernmental organizations, crippling their ability to communicate and access data and information required for carrying out their operations.
One person interviewed said that “[the Houthis] occupied the offices of the two biggest UN agencies. They’ve taken vehicles from some agencies. They’ve confiscated [technological] equipment.… So just as a pure result of what they’ve done so far, the direct consequences of the Houthis’ activities have essentially paralyzed humanitarian operations.”
An aid worker said, “I cannot ask colleagues for any form of data for reporting. You suddenly wake up in the morning and you don’t have an office, don’t have equipment, you don’t have a team.”
An aid worker who was displaced from Sanaa due to the risks the Houthis have imposed on civil society said: “In the middle of the night, I packed my entire life into two bags and cried.… I still remember my friends, my people locked away for doing their job. My beloved country is in ruins.”
Several sources said that the Houthis have required many employees of the UN who stayed behind in Houthi-controlled territories to sign papers stating that they would not leave the area. Some aid agencies that have remained working in the Houthi-controlled territories said that if the arrests and harassment of aid agency staff continued, they would need to reassess whether they could keep operating in the area.
One person working on health care said: “The situation is already catastrophic. Cholera outbreaks, malnutrition, etc. Without [the organization] and other partners in the health sector, it would be the collapse of the health sector in the north.” Nongovernmental groups and the UN are currently supporting a large number of hospitals and healthcare clinics throughout Houthi-controlled territories.
In a joint statement published in October, over 30 aid organizations in Yemen said that according to research conducted in August 2025, “[o]ver 100 districts in Yemen now face a critical nutrition emergency, an unprecedented increase in malnutrition levels across the country.” They said that in Abs District of Hajjah governorate, “children have died of starvation as malnutrition rates soared, while in Al Hodeida and Taiz, a projected 15-30 percent rise in acute malnutrition is expected by the end of the year.”
The organizations stated that “While conditions are challenging across Yemen, in northern governorates [Houthi-controlled territories], the ongoing detention of humanitarian staff has further obstructed lifesaving aid operations.”
The Houthis’ actions continue a troubling pattern of repression of civic space in Yemen and a brutal targeting of human rights and humanitarian workers under baseless accusations of espionage.
It is imperative for the United Nations, independent groups working in Yemen, and concerned governments to take every action in their power to ensure the release of those detained, Human Rights Watch said. Oman, which has been a mediator in negotiations between the Houthis and other warring parties, should work with other countries collectively to ensure that the Houthis release the detainees.
Enforced disappearances, in which the authorities detain a person and then refuse to acknowledge their whereabouts or situation when asked, are serious crimes under international law and are prohibited at all times under both international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
Arresting a person without a warrant and clear charges is a violation under Article 132 of the Yemeni Criminal Procedures Law.
“By targeting aid workers, the Houthis are also targeting the many Yemenis who depend on the aid they provide,” said Jafarnia. “The international community, particularly governments in the region, should do everything in their power to ensure the dozens of arbitrarily detained UN and civil society staff are immediately released.”
Detentions of Aid Agency Workers
Starting on May 31, 2024, Houthi security forces arrested and forcibly disappeared several staff of Yemeni civil society organizations. Then on June 6, they arrested dozens of people, including at least 13 UN staff and many employees of nongovernmental organizations.
The Houthis then detained at least eight UN staff members between January 23 and 25, 2025. This new wave of arrests came after US president Donald Trump redesignated the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization” through an executive order on January 22, 2025, over its actions firing at US warships in the Red Sea. One of the UN staff members detained in January, a World Food Program employee, died in Houthi custody on February 11.
Because of these arrests and the continuing risks to its staff, the UN suspended its activities in Saada, a governorate in northern Yemen, where thousands of people are facing emergency levels of food insecurity and were relying on UN aid to survive.
On August 31, the Houthis began its most recent wave of arrests and raids on UN and international nongovernmental agency offices. Houthi forces raided several UN offices and detained at least 19 UN staff. In addition to those arrested, many UN staff were held and interrogated for several days within UN offices.
Between September and December, the Houthis continued arresting UN staff, raiding several UN offices and the UN compound in Sanaa, confiscating devices and holding some staff there in arbitrary detention for several days for questioning. In November the Houthis also raided the offices of all international groups operating in Houthi-controlled territories, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Another round of arrests began three days after the Israeli military carried out attacks on Sanaa, the capital, which killed the Houthis’ prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi, and several other government ministers.
On November 10, the Houthis also raided the office of Dal Center for Social Studies, a civil society organization in Sanaa, and detained Professor Hammoud al-Awdi, a sociologist at Sanaa University and a leader in Yemen’s civil society, along with two of his colleagues, Abdulrahman al-Alfi and Anwar Khaled Shaab. After three weeks being held incommunicado, al-Awdi and al-Alfi were released, but Shaab still remains in detention.
Human Rights Watch found many individuals were arrested without being shown arrest warrants and were forcibly disappeared for months. While some have received medical care, many have not, including some detainees who have serious medical conditions.
No sources that Human Rights Watch spoke to were aware of any detainees having access to lawyers.
In November, the Houthi’s Specialized Criminal Court conducted unfair trials for 21 detainees—unrelated to the detained UN and civil society staff—and sentenced 17 to death. Many were charged with espionage without clear basis and without adequate access to due process.
The next month, the Houthis transferred the cases of 13 more detainees to the Specialized Criminal Court, including three UN employees.
Compounded Aid Crisis, Worsening Hunger
The Houthis’ arrests have coincided, and in some cases possibly responded to, the US designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, which led to several aid organizations being forced to cut their operations in Houthi-controlled territory. The arrests have also coincided with US cuts to foreign aid, which, alongside the foreign terrorist designation, have contributed in some cases to the decision of other states to also pull out or cut back on financing aid in Yemen. All together, these actions have had a devastating impact on aid in the country despite the severe and growing needs.
Several sources across the humanitarian aid sector in Yemen said that the arrests, the FTO designation, and cuts to aid have together forced them to cut back on operations in Yemen, especially in Houthi-controlled territory, which has meant cutting some essential health programs, water and sanitation programs, and food aid.
One source said that the organization they work with was “forced to close operations in the north [Houthi-controlled territory] and relocate to the south,” as a result of the funding gaps and the terrorist designation, in addition to the Houthis’ detention of UN and civil society staff.
In their November 2025 report, the WFP and FAO found that Yemen’s crisis of food insecurity is expected to worsen in the coming months. They stated that the factors contributing to the deepening hunger crisis includes: “economic deterioration, escalating conflict, economic sanctions, adverse weather conditions, population displacement and disrupted supply chains that restrict market access, amid extreme humanitarian access constraints and the collapse of safety nets.”
Targeting Aid Workers
Many of those detained had been providing humanitarian aid, or supporting Yemen’s health and education sectors, and their detentions have meant lost capacity for the provision of aid in Yemen.
Ammar Nasser had worked with WFP in Gaza from March to July 2025, prior to going back to Yemen to work for WFP in Sanaa as a safety and security officer. He was arbitrarily detained on August 31, as one of 15 UN employees who were arrested when the Houthis raided WFP and UNICEF offices in Sanaa and Hodeidah. In a televised speech, Abdulmalek al-Houthi, the Houthi leader, specifically accused the WFP, including the safety and security officer, of having had a role in Israeli forces’ attack on several Houthi ministers on August 28.
Hind Khoudary, a prominent Palestinian journalist in Gaza, told Human Rights Watch that she worked with Nasser at WFP for several months in Gaza and was displaced with him. In a social media post, she said:
Ammar is a true humanitarian who worked day and night to make sure people in Gaza received the food they needed. When he wasn’t working, he was caring for people, laughing with children, and sharing stories of his love for Yemen and Palestine. Everyone who met him in Gaza remembers his kindness, dedication and loyalty to the Palestinian people. Today, he’s being punished for his humanity. The only “proof” against him is that he served the people of Gaza with honor and compassion.
One of the detainees, a public health expert, had spent over two decades implementing projects and developing policies focused on improving health in Yemen and across the Middle East and North Africa region. He was arrested by Houthi forces on June 8, 2024, and these forces subsequently disappeared him for seven months. Since then, his wife has only had a handful of phone calls with him, each just lasting a few minutes. He has not received health care or medicine, despite suffering from glaucoma, nor has he had access to a lawyer. His wife said:
[My husband] worked on strengthening the public health programs in Yemen since the early 2000’s until he was detained. All of these projects were approved by the Houthis’ Ministry of Health. None of the projects were a secret. Every project was under their supervision. Saving children’s lives has now become a crime.
Another one of the detainees had been working for several nongovernmental organizations as a consultant and was also arrested and disappeared from his home on June 8, 2024. His son, said that his father had worked on “education, women’s rights, [and] children’s rights. All the programs that are advocating for people’s rights.” He said that his father’s work included “giving salaries to teachers who hadn’t had salaries since the war started.”
The son of another detainee said that his father had worked with the UN because “he felt he was doing something good [for his country], and really enjoyed what he was doing, even though it wasn’t easy.” He said that even though his father had been offered job opportunities outside of Yemen, he’d never taken them as he had wanted to stay in his homeland.
A History of Obstructing Humanitarian Aid
Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented that the Houthis have obstructed humanitarian aid for several years, despite ongoing catastrophic health crises.
International and local nongovernmental organizations require approval by Houthi authorities for everything from workshops they plan to hold to the movement of their staff to implement projects that the Houthis have already approved.
“We try to be super forward with authorities about everything we do, very transparent. We apply for permits for everything. Our work in the north is hampered by this and the mahram restrictions [the restrictions on women’s freedom of movement],” said one individual working in humanitarian aid. Several other sources from a variety of organizations provided similar accounts.
“Our colleague … was fully in touch with the authorities and shared everything with them, they would always ask for permission for everything they did,” said a UN staff member about their detained colleague.
Over the years, several sources have told Human Rights Watch that the Houthis have interfered in hiring processes and program bids, have manipulated beneficiary lists, and have blocked and restricted the implementation of essential operations such as out needs assessments.
Most recently, in October 2025, Reuters found that the Houthis have “used international food aid to force parents to hand over children to be soldiers in its armed forces,” based on “interviews with hundreds of Yemenis” who had fled Houthi-controlled areas. The news agency also stated that based on “[i]nterviews with Yemeni civilians and dozens of aid workers, as well as a review of internal UN aid agency documents, reveal … [the Houthis] levy an array of taxes on their impoverished subjects, manipulate the international aid system and imprison hundreds.”
Human Rights Watch research confirms this practice.
The WFP has partially suspended its aid in Yemen twice over the last six years. In 2019, they explicitly stated that the aid paused was due to aid diversion. David Beasley, the head of WFP at the time, told the UN Security Council that the Houthis were diverting food aid away “from the mouths of hungry little boys and little girls,” and that Houthi authorities were not respecting the agreements they had made with the UN.
In 2023, the WFP again paused aid, stating it was a result of limited funding and an inability to come to an agreement with the Houthis “on a smaller program that matches available resources to the neediest families.” Several sources have told Human Rights Watch that the pullout was linked with disagreements over beneficiary lists and the Houthis’ continued use of aid to recruit fighters to their forces.
Baseless Accusations of Espionage
The arrests have been accompanied by an ongoing Houthi-led media campaign accusing humanitarian organizations and their staff of “conspiring” against the country’s interests through their projects. Following the first wave of arrests, on June 10, 2024, the Houthi Security and Intelligence Service announced the “discovery” of what they called “a spying network.” Two days later, Al Masirah TV, a Houthi-affiliated channel, broadcast a video featuring a different group of detainees “confessing” to spying. The group had been detained between 2021 and 2023 and held incommunicado since then.
In August 2024, the Houthi-run Supreme Council for Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and International Cooperation reiterated the Houthis’ restrictive policies on humanitarian activities in five-day long meetings with the staff of UN and other international groups’ staff, warning them “of the dangers of espionage that may be exploited within the framework of humanitarian work.”
The so-called evidence shown in the videos accusing them of being spies included letters of recommendation from their current or former employers, including the US embassy in Yemen, citing the projects they had worked on, and recommending them for future employment and visas. Human Rights Watch could not confirm the veracity of the documents, but they do not appear to contain evidence of espionage.
In a statement on June 14, 2024, Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk stressed that “the public broadcasting on 10 and 12 June of statements procured under circumstances of inherent duress from our colleague, detained incommunicado, and others detained since 2021 is totally unacceptable, and itself violates their human rights.”
Two sources told Human Rights Watch that families of some detainees have been told that their detained family member may have also been forced by authorities to confess in a video, despite not having had any access to lawyers. The Houthis have also released videos of other detainees confessing to espionage and other charges, suggesting that the practice of forced confessions is continuing.
Human Rights Watch and other groups, including the former UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, have documented the Houthis’ use of torture to obtain information or confessions. In their 2020 report, the experts said that they had “verified that 14 men and 1 boy had been subjected to torture, including sexual violence in eight cases, to extract written confessions or punish them while levelling accusations of affiliations to different political and military groups.”
Houthis have used Israeli forces’ attacks to try to further justify the arrests and accusations of espionage, as well as their escalating their repression of Yemenis living in areas under their control.
On October 16, Abdulmalek al-Houthi, the Houthis’ leader, claimed in a televised statement that the UN and international organizations were engaged in espionage and carrying out surveillance and intelligence activities. In particular, he alleged that “a cell affiliated with the UN’s World Food Program played a key role in Israeli forces’ targeting and killing of several Houthi ministers.” He added that “these organizations had been supplied with surveillance equipment and capabilities typically used by global intelligence agencies.”
Nasruddin Amer, a senior Houthi official, published a tweet on his X account stating that “(…) organizations operate ostensibly under the banner of relief and humanitarian work, while in reality they are organizations of a military and intelligence nature.
Houthi authorities have not publicly provided clear evidence to back these claims, and as far as sources who spoke to Human Rights Watch are aware, they have not formally charged or provided due process to those WFP employees or any other UN employees they have detained to dispute these accusations.
Al Masirah TV has been airing videos and media pieces accusing the UN and international groups of espionage and portraying their staff as spies.
Since 2015, several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and the Gulf Center for Human Rights have altogether documented dozens of cases involving journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents and members of religious minorities who had been subjected to unfair trials before Houthi-controlled courts on abusive charges. In all these cases, the Houthis’ prosecution authorities appeared to have brought the spying charges in order to persecute political opponents and silence peaceful dissent.
Notably, on June 1, 2024, the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) sentenced 44 people to death on trumped up spying charges following an unfair mass trial. Sixteen were sentenced in absentia while 28 were brought before the SCC.
