News & Comment
The International Failure in Yemen

News

The U.N.'s humanitarian chief warned last week that 14 million people in Yemen — or half of the country's population — need aid to survive amid fears of an "imminent and great big famine."

Mark Lowcock told the Security Council that this potential famine would be "much bigger than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives."

"It’s astounding that today, the international community can sit on its hands and, in fact, allow and facilitate this famine," said Oxfam's Richard Stanforth. (nbcnews.com 28/10/2018)

Comment

Famines are often a result of environmental causes, such as lack of rain or failure of crops but all too often in current times, war is a prominent cause. Famines result in malnutrition, starvation and death.

The international community is most definitely facilitating the famine in Yemen. The arms used by the Saudi led coalition to bomb an already underdeveloped country are supplied by the US and Europe, who sell with full knowledge of how these weapons will be used.

Blockade on food and medicine to Yemen is against International law, yet no one is taking anyone to court and pushing for the rights of those being sanctioned.

This conflict and its outcome of such devastating effects on civilians, and especially on children, is widely ignored and is supported by Western powers who care nothing for the lives of the future generation of Yemen.

The picture of the current international community and its governance of the world order is clear for all when we look at the crisis in Yemen. Whilst NGO’s and charities call out the actions of governments and appeal to the general public to assist with donations, it is clear to see how the World powers are totally unmoved by the crisis in Yemen as this is a crisis they created through their support of the Saudi regime and its allies by selling them arms in this conflict and also by ignoring the atrocities that have been committed.

There is no hope in addressing ‘the international community’ as its purpose is only self-serving and it is happy to sit and watch while the institutions that it set up for checks and balances, such as the United Nations, set alarm bells of crisis after crisis and no one does anything but talk!

The so-called International community was never meant to provide good governance or justice to the less developed countries and was only meant to serve the interests of the Western powers. As a result, we see the crisis in Yemen has no end according to them and its fall out is ‘terrible’ but we are just provided another set of numbers and statistics that mean very little in terms of real solutions and or actions.

Only the sincere world leadership of the Khilafah on the methodology of the Prophethood will see a crisis in the world as a matter of accountability and responsibility.

It will not play political games between countries and arm them to serve its own strategic interests or to loot resources. It will not present problems in a detached manner where one’s consciousness is pricked only till the next headline comes along. It is time to replace the cold hearted benefit seeking the so-called international community with the sincere Islamic Khilafah system. This is the only solution to the failed system of governance of the “International community”.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Nazia Rehman