In late August 2023, Hisham al-Hakimi, Save the Children International’s safety and security director in Yemen, informed his colleagues he was in danger of being detained.
In early September, Ansar Allah – the group known as the Houthis that controls most of northern Yemen – arrested him in the capital Sana’a and took him to an undisclosed location. In late October, Save the Children announced that al-Hakimi had died in custody. He was 44 years old. The organisation described his death as “unexplained” and called for an investigation.
More than 16 months later, neither Save the Children nor the Houthis have released official explanations for his detention and death. A spate of further arrests and another aid worker death in custody have only increased the urgency of the questions – and tough choices – facing the sector and others operating in Yemen.
The New Humanitarian has sought to piece together the events leading up to al-Hakimi’s arrest, during his detention, and after his death. What lessons, if any, can be drawn from what happened to this senior Save the Children staffer?
Why the Houthis targeted al-Hakimi remains elusive, and The New Humanitarian has not seen any evidence that anyone other than his captors was responsible for his death. But interviews with current and former Save the Children staff, as well as internal documents, reveal that the organisation’s Yemen operation faced serious internal problems immediately before, during, and after his arrest. Workplace disputes and an underresourced system for reporting staff concerns may have left the country office more vulnerable to interference by a powerful armed group with a history of arbitrary detentions.
Save the Children’s own investigations found that staff had raised “various concerns” about the Yemen country office for months before and after al-Hakimi’s arrest, but the organisation’s “incident management processes failed” and its “risk management processes were not followed”, according to a three-page summary of the findings seen by The New Humanitarian.
“Overall, it was found that there were fundamental failures of leadership, process, and accountability that we must urgently address,” the summary said.
Since al-Hakimi’s death, the Houthis have escalated their crackdown on local aid and civil society workers. They arrested more than 50 people in June 2024, including 13 UN personnel, then another eight UN workers in January this year. Many of the detainees remain incommunicado. At least three have been released. One UN worker died in custody in early February.
These tragedies have placed the aid sector in a double bind. Some relatives of the detainees and some Yemen experts are calling on aid leaders to enforce tougher red lines against Houthi interference in humanitarian work, including detentions of aid workers. On the other hand, irritating the Houthis could provoke further arrests or the loss of access to communities that need assistance – and that are now bracing for the impacts of US President Donald Trump’s aid cuts.
For this investigation, The New Humanitarian interviewed five Yemen experts, as well as relatives of three currently detained aid workers. All said that aid organisations have accommodated Houthi interference in their work for too long, compromising humanitarian principles and relinquishing the leverage necessary to deter staff arrests.
“The international community, including the UN and INGOs operating in Yemen, is not doing enough to advocate for the release of the detainees,” said Niku Jafarnia, a Human Rights Watch researcher who focuses on abuses in Yemen and Bahrain.
“Many have continued their operations in Houthi-controlled territories without taking adequate measures to protect non-arrested staff,” she said. “They should place more pressure on the Houthis to release staff who have been detained, and to end other practices, such as aid diversion, that have been ongoing for years.”
Relatives of the three detainees who spoke to The New Humanitarian criticised what they called a tepid public response to the arrests by the UN and INGOs, and said they hoped media coverage would prompt aid organisations to take stronger action on behalf of those being held.
Detention and diversion
Yemeni human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of arbitrary detention by the Houthis since their takeover of Sana’a in late 2014. They have targeted perceived political opponents, journalists, human rights defenders, and religious minorities, operating a network of official and unofficial detention centres where torture is rife.
Some detainees have been held for ransom or to force prisoner exchanges with the internationally recognised government, which governs much of southern Yemen from its base in Aden and abroad. In 2021, the Houthis arrested around 20 former staff of the US embassy in Sana’a, which suspended operations in 2014. Some have been released.
The Houthis have waged a civil war against the government and its allies since 2015, with a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supporting the anti-Houthi forces with airstrikes, ground troops, and – early on in the conflict – financially. But that support has decreased significantly over the years. Iran is widely believed to have supplied the Houthis with weapons, training, and other support, though Tehran has denied much of this.
The front lines have been largely stagnant since 2022, despite the signing and expiration of a ceasefire deal that year. Peace talks have been mostly unsuccessful. The war and its attendant economic crisis have left Yemen – already one of the region’s poorest countries before 2015 – beset by a massive humanitarian crisis. As needs have risen, billions of dollars have flowed into Yemen through UN-coordinated aid appeals.
Part of this assistance is regularly diverted into Houthi coffers. The internationally recognised government has also been accused of diverting aid, though on a smaller scale.
Journalists have uncovered instances of UN agencies paying the salaries of Houthi officials. The Houthis have also sold food aid on the black market and used it to coerce families into providing combat recruits.
Even as frontline fighting has slowed, the Houthis’ exploitation of aid has grown “more comprehensive, and its targeting of humanitarians more extreme”, according to research by the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, a Yemen-focused think tank.
Sarah Vuylsteke – who served as access coordinator for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Yemen in 2019, and has also worked in Afghanistan and South Sudan – said the Houthis restrict aid agencies’ ability to travel around their territory, to conduct independent needs assessments, and to monitor their programmes.
Aid agencies also face pressure to use Houthi ministries as implementing partners. In 2019, WFP’s main implementing partner for food aid was the Houthi Ministry of Education, which did not disclose its distribution points and blocked the agency from monitoring feeding programmes, Vuylsteke told The New Humanitarian.
“We could never observe the food actually being distributed, so it was kind of like a black hole,” she said. “Every single time you reach this red line that we would never accept in another context, and we went beyond it, and there was no pushback… it just became a precedent.”
A WFP spokesperson confirmed the agency currently uses the Houthi Ministry of Health as an implementing partner.
Several people who reportedly failed to play along with Houthi diversion tactics have been detained. In 2023, they arrested Adnan al-Harazi, who ran a company that monitored aid programmes for several UN agencies. He was sentenced to death last June, the same month as the mass arrests of aid and civil society workers. As of January 2025, al-Harazi was challenging his sentence in an appeals court.
“These arrests and office closures send a stark message,” said Mohammed Albasha, founder of Basha Report, a US-based risk advisory operating in the Middle East. “Anyone associated with a foreign entity risks detention, asset seizure, or even the death penalty.”
“The international community should recognise that the Houthis likely view these detained aid workers as bargaining chips,” he added.
According to Jafarnia, the Houthis are also seizing greater control over sectors beyond aid, capitalising since late 2023 on widespread regional support for their disruption of Red Sea shipping as a purported deterrent against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
“There are a lot of arrests happening right now in so many sectors – telecommunications, education, pharmaceuticals – and other companies that are just profitable,” she said. “The Houthis are really trying to assert a new wave of control.”
“A nasty environment”
In the days leading up to al-Hakimi’s arrest, Save the Children’s Yemen office was dealing with its own accusations of aid diversion. These have not been substantiated, and there is no evidence that they led to his arrest.
The following recounting of events is drawn from interviews with a former senior Save the Children staff member with direct knowledge of the organisation’s response to al-Hakimi’s arrest. Six other current and former staff members corroborated various parts of the account. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisals.
For nearly a year leading up to al-Hakimi’s arrest, anonymous attackers waged a cyberbullying campaign against his boss, Save the Children’s then-country director in Yemen. The former country director requested not to be named out of concern for further harassment, and declined to be quoted in this article.
In 2022, this country director had tried to implement a policy limiting the office’s employment of people related to each other. The plan rankled some staff and was ultimately scrapped.
But the online attacks continued, accusing the director of promoting homosexuality in Yemen, seeking to replace Yemeni staff with foreigners, and diverting aid to the Houthis.
Save the Children International’s regional office in Jordan documented the posts attacking the country director but were unable to identify the perpetrators.
“[The director was] obviously being targeted,” the former senior staff member said. “It was a bit of a nasty environment.”
A few months into 2023, Save the Children’s regional leadership sent two staff members to observe the problems unfolding in the Yemen office. “They came back with a pretty damning report of the Yemen country office operations,” the former senior staff member said.
Another staff member recalled the visiting colleagues describing the Yemen office as “highly dysfunctional”. “When the Hisham tragedy happened, many staff members… told me that this was exactly what this mission [from the regional office] had warned about,” they said.
Al-Hakimi and the country director appeared to get along, but, according to the former senior staff member, “it was a complete front, and eventually, it all blew up”.
In July or August 2023, an anonymous social media post accused the country director of various forms of aid diversion, such as improperly giving a Save the Children vehicle to the Houthis, according to the former senior staff member. The New Humanitarian has not seen the alleged post, nor any evidence the country director was involved in any improper activities.
The post kicked off what appeared to be a rapid chain of events culminating in al-Hakimi’s arrest, but because the Houthis never explained why they arrested him, it remains uncertain whether the events were related.
Soon after the post appeared, the country director, accompanied by a few Save the Children colleagues, attended a meeting with SCMCHA, the now-disbanded Houthi aid regulation body. The Houthi officials wanted to know who was responsible for the post, and asked the colleagues to leave the room for part of the meeting.
This set off suspicion among the colleagues that the country director may have blamed the post on members of their team. The former senior staff member said the country director denied giving the authorities any names.
The colleagues shared their suspicions with al-Hakimi, who then filed a series of reports – via email and Datix, Save the Children’s internal platform for reporting fraud and other incidents – telling colleagues in Jordan he was worried he would be arrested. According to the former senior staff member, al-Hakimi claimed the country director had blamed the post on him and members of his team. “Hisham’s report specifically stated he felt that [the director’s] actions were putting him at risk,” they said.
Within a few days, the country director filed their own report, accusing colleagues of orchestrating the online attacks against them. The former senior staff member said it was clear the director was referring to al-Hakimi and his team.
Belinda Goldsmith, director of Save the Children’s Global Media Unit, confirmed that al-Hakimi had reported to regional colleagues that he felt he was in danger before he was arrested.
“They were in constant contact with him to work out the best way forward,” Goldsmith told The New Humanitarian in late 2023, adding that “relocation was discussed as one of the possible options”.
But al-Hakimi refused to leave Sana’a. “If he leaves, he looks guilty [of fleeing the scene],” the former senior staff member said. “He could never go home.”
“He said that his work environment was becoming so toxic [that] it was difficult for him to continue. He said he was feeling threatened, but he could not leave because he wouldn’t be able to find a job like this one…”
Riyadh Aldubai, a Yemeni human rights activist based in the Netherlands, said he also received a call from al-Hakimi in late August 2023.
“He said that his work environment was becoming so toxic [that] it was difficult for him to continue,” Aldubai said. “He said he was feeling threatened, but he could not leave because he wouldn’t be able to find a job like this one… He said being a refugee was not an option for him. He asked me to pray for him because he didn’t know what to do.”
The country director also declined to leave Yemen, according to the former senior staff member, who recalled the director saying they wanted to stay out of responsibility to their team.
Save the Children’s investigations into al-Hakimi’s detention and death, conducted in the first half of 2024, found that a “negative working culture had developed” in the Yemen office, where the organisation’s values were not properly reinforced, according to the three-page summary. “This left many staff feeling disillusioned and marginalised,” it added.
The organisation also identified “breakdowns in our reporting process when it comes to Datix”, and pledged to “strengthen our whistleblowing processes and train staff, so they are better equipped to manage concerns”.
The investigations found that senior regional and headquarters staff failed to comply with some of the organisation’s policies and procedures. According to the three-page summary, “leadership across the organisation did not pick up on the deteriorating situation in Yemen quickly enough”.
The aftermath
In the emails and Datix report he sent to colleagues in the days before his arrest, al-Hakimi expressed a clear fear for his safety. But in conversations with some colleagues, he put on a brave face.
“We talked about this with Hisham in depth, and he was absolutely positive that even if he was arrested, [it would be] three days, he’d be released, and that would be normal,” the former senior staff member said.
He was arrested on 9 September 2023, while off duty, in what the colleagues described as a planned, multi-agency operation. “I think this was a much higher level than even he had anticipated,” the former senior staff member said.
The arrest was a uniquely serious blow to the Sana’a office. Al-Hakimi, as safety and security director, was responsible for managing security threats. “If someone gets detained, he’s the guy who would go in and get everybody out, or he’d go in and do the negotiations,” the former senior staff member said. “He was very, very highly connected.”
Within a few days, the country director and several regional colleagues secured a call with SCMCHA to ask about al-Hakimi’s well-being, where he was being held, and why. The officials offered vague answers that sowed confusion over whether the arrest was related to his work or his personal life.
“What they said is, he’ll be investigated as a member of Save the Children, but he will also be investigated as a civilian,” the former senior staff member recalled, adding that the Houthis did not mention the aid diversion allegations, nor any information supposedly supplied by the country director.
The Houthi officials insisted that al-Hakimi had been detained legally and would be released after a few days. They questioned Save the Children’s level of concern. “They were actually mocking us,” the former senior staff member said.
A few days passed without al-Hakimi’s release, prompting another call with SCMCHA. The authorities offered no new information, signalling that the crisis would have to be managed at a higher level within Save the Children, the former senior staff member said.
But the country director’s involvement was cut short. Following the second call with the Houthi authorities, they left Yemen and were dismissed from the organisation about a month before Save the Children was notified of Hisham’s death.
Goldsmith confirmed in late 2023 that the organisation had dismissed one staff member “as part of a number of ongoing investigations, including an internal review into the adherence to our policies on staff safety”. She declined to identify the staff member.
The New Humanitarian has not seen any evidence that the country director’s actions caused al-Hakimi’s arrest, nor that their termination was related to him specifically.
According to the former senior staff member, the country director’s departure was another blow to the Yemen office’s ability to manage the crisis locally.
“What was required was a country office incident management team to have been established immediately – this did not happen,” he said. “With [the country director] and Hisham out of the picture, there was no leadership, and no one stepped up to manage the situation at the country office level.”
“The Yemen country office team literally had no incident management capacity,” he added.
Goldsmith did not respond to questions about the organisation’s capacity to respond to al-Hakimi’s arrest following the country director’s departure.
The colleagues managed to locate where al-Hakimi was being held and delivered a bag of clothes to him. “But they never saw him,” the former senior staff member said.
Save the Children International’s leadership was informed of al-Hakimi’s death on 24 October 2023, according to an internal email seen by The New Humanitarian.
The organisation demanded an explanation from the Houthi authorities, who then provided a statement saying al-Hakimi had been arrested over activities that he had previously been warned about, and that he had ignored those warnings, but “the activities they talked about were never elaborated on”, the former senior staff member said.
Organisations critical of the Houthis have linked several detentions from late 2023 to an official named Mohammed al-Washli, deputy director of the Houthi Security and Intelligence Service. The Yemeni human rights group Mayyun reported that al-Washli oversaw al-Hakimi’s detention. According to the Khabar News Agency, al-Washli also oversaw the detention of several education experts a few weeks later. One of those experts, Sabri al-Hakimi, died in custody in March 2024. It is not clear if he was related to Hisham.
Houthi spokesperson Mohamed Abdelsalam did not respond to questions about these detentions.
Years of escalating Houthi detentions
The summary of Save the Children’s investigations does not offer an explanation for why al-Hakimi was arrested or how he died.
“Despite our best efforts to understand what happened and why, the challenges in Yemen mean we will never know the full circumstances around Hisham’s death,” Goldsmith told The New Humanitarian in early February 2025. She did not respond to questions about the events leading up to al-Hakimi’s arrest, but she did say that the organisation had taken a number of steps, including “appointing new leadership and strengthening our governance and oversight processes in both Yemen and the wider region”.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales told The New Humanitarian in early February 2025 that it is engaging with Save the Children International over a compliance case “relating to allegations raised about the operation of its Yemen office”. A spokesperson declined to say whether the case is related to al-Hakimi’s death.
Calls for stronger action
In late October 2023, Save the Children International leaders announced al-Hakimi’s death across the organisation and to the public. They paused activities in northern Yemen for 10 days.
“We do not have any information on the circumstances of his death or the rationale for his detention and hence, we will be calling for an investigation,” then-regional director Ekin Ogutogullari told staff in an email. “Out of respect of Hisham’s family and friends, I would like to request that you refrain from any speculation as we search for answers.”
The lack of information frustrated staff, who were not previously informed that their colleague was in Houthi custody. In calls with senior leaders following al-Hakimi’s death, some employees questioned why the organisation had not reacted more forcefully.
“There was this belief that had Hisham been an international staff member, maybe the response would have been different,” one staff member said. “Maybe there would be more urgency in the way the organisation dealt with this crisis – there would be more public campaigning.”
Jafarnia, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said the Houthis use a familiar set of tactics to pacify organisations whose workers have been detained.
“The Houthis basically use the same lines with everyone,” she told The New Humanitarian. “They tell people not to talk about their cases. They say that they’ll be fine, they’ve been treated well, and they’ll be released as soon as the investigation is finished.”
“I think a lot of organisations have not taken stronger actions because they, and many family members of the detainees, want to believe these promises and are too scared to do anything that may possibly worsen the situation,” she said. “But there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary – that when people are not talking publicly about their cases, there’s a greater chance that the Houthis will treat them worse in detention, or that they may die in detention.”
Following the mass arrests in June 2024 and January 2025, the response by UN agencies, INGOs, and donors has also been “slow and relatively muted”, according to the Sana’a Center.
Last September, the UN announced it would cut back development work and prioritise “lifesaving” activities to reduce workers’ exposure to risk in Houthi-held areas. Aid workers surveyed by the Sana’a Center said at the time that the plan “effectively maintains the subsidies that help the Houthis” recruit soldiers and control state institutions.
Relatives of three current detainees, including two UN staff members, said they want to see employers take stronger action. The New Humanitarian is withholding some identifying information about the relatives out of concern for the safety of the detainees.
One relative described the Houthi raid on a Yemeni UN staff member’s home last June: Around 15 armed officers stormed in, while others surrounded the property. They rummaged through pillows, documents, and family photos. Although they did not appear to find anything incriminating, they arrested the UN worker and took the family’s car.
“They surrounded the whole area with cars and guns, like they were arresting a very important terrorist,” the relative said, adding that the UN staff member was not involved in any political activities.
“Why would he get arrested? It’s only because he works for [the UN],” he said.
The relative questioned why UN aid agencies have continued their activities in Houthi-controlled areas while more than a dozen of their staff are arbitrarily detained.
“What have they done? What restrictions [have they imposed]? What have they negotiated? [The Houthis] took these people, and they can come tomorrow and take others,” he said. “We’re feeling really disappointed and abandoned.”
In another case, the World Health Organization failed to act on safety concerns raised by a staff member shortly before he was arrested, according to a relative.
In May 2024, a doctor working on immunisation campaigns for the WHO warned his office’s security team that he was being followed, and that Houthi intelligence officials had visited the Ministry of Health to ask about his work and his salary, the relative told The New Humanitarian. “But they did nothing,” he said, referring to the agency.
The doctor was arrested the following month. He remains in custody.
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said he could not comment on security issues or measures taken for staff safety.
Like al-Hakimi, the doctor was embroiled in workplace disputes in the months before his arrest. During a team meeting in early 2024, he criticised WHO leaders over the termination of dozens of Yemeni staff while the agency reportedly recruited and retained high-level international staff.
“The WHO country office is marginalising the national staff and excluding them from many decision-making meetings and committees,” the doctor said, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The New Humanitarian.
Lindmeier said funding constraints have had a severe impact on both national and international staff in WHO’s Yemen office, adding that 90% of current staff are local.
Following the meeting, according to a text message seen by The New Humanitarian, the doctor told a friend: “I am at war with the organisation. I caused a problem for them, and now the people are coming after me.”
The friend, a former UN staff member, said the doctor had also been involved in “financial operational disputes” with the Houthi health ministry over concerns that funds he oversaw would be diverted. The friend said the doctor had been warned repeatedly by Houthi officials to stop obstructing programmes.
“He was aware that if this budget goes to the Houthis, nothing will be implemented, and the immunisation campaign will fail,” he said. “He’s the kind of person who cannot be silent when he sees something wrong… I think this is the reason why [the Houthis] targeted [him].”
Lindmeier said the doctor did not inform his supervisors of these concerns.
UN leaders are “totally and fully aware that the Houthis are corrupt, and they are totally aware that the money given to them will never reach those in need, but they continue working with them”, the friend said. “They would prefer to give the Houthis what they want than confronting them or arguing with them.”
That is why, the friend added, “there was no real protection by the UN”.
Following the doctor’s arrest, some of his responsibilities were left with a colleague who had previously served as a senior Houthi official, the friend said.
That colleague, Mohammed al-Mota, served as director of relations with international organisations within the Houthi health ministry in 2016. His appointment, according to an Al Jazeera report, was part of a process that turned the ministry into a “golden egg-laying goose for the Houthis”, giving the movement control over funds from international organisations, as well as the local pharmaceuticals market.
Lindmeier said al-Mota was recruited in “WHO’s usual selection process” in 2011, worked for the agency until 2015, and then returned in 2017 as part of a team that included the now-detained doctor.
“When [the doctor] was detained, Dr. Al-Mota continued delivering on the team’s work,” Lindmeier said.
The spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on why the WHO would need to employ someone who recently represented one of the parties to the conflict in Yemen.
Al-Mota did not respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn.
The mass arrests have left aid and civil society workers feeling increasing pressure to “actively help the Houthis and be useful to them”, according to the Sana’a Center. Scores have fled Houthi-controlled areas.
Albasha, the Basha Report founder, said his UN contacts in Sana’a have never been more afraid. He summarised their descriptions of their working conditions: “If you’re locked up, sorry, but we will have to replace you. Work or quit.”
Conflicting imperatives
In a February report on the recent mass arrests of aid workers, researchers at the Sana’a Center proposed three options for the aid community: Stay in Sana’a and continue negotiating; relocate outside Houthi-controlled areas; or halt operations in Houthi territory until staff are released and aid restrictions are lifted.
Of the 14 humanitarian and civil society workers interviewed by the researchers, 10 supported the third option.
Julien Harneis, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, responded to a similar suggestion during a Chatham House event last year.
“I’m a humanitarian,” he said. “We have positive obligations to save lives in Yemen. Every hour, a child under five dies. Our humanitarian assistance stops that being two or three children.”
To suggest stopping assistance in Houthi-held areas, he said, warrants asking: “How many people do you want to kill? Is it 10,000 children? Is it 20,000 children that we’re going to allow to die?”
“That’s a cop-out,” said Vuylsteke, the former WFP access coordinator in Yemen, commenting on Harneis’s statements. “I would ask him, but do you know that the aid that you’re delivering in the current circumstance – that you’re unwilling to push back on – is actually helping people?”
Multiple reports published over the last few years raise similar questions about how much aid in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen reaches its intended recipients.
According to Farea al-Muslimi, a research fellow at Chatham House, humanitarian organisations hesitate to stand up to Houthi interference because it could put their access to beneficiaries at risk.
“Donors will only give you money if you have access,” al-Muslimi told The New Humanitarian. “But the donors are not inside the country to see how the money is spent, so, as long as aid organisations have access, they let the Houthis control the aid as they want.”
In response to questions from The New Humanitarian, Harneis said his only considerations when making decisions are humanitarian principles and international humanitarian law.
A spokesperson for the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, said “the overwhelming majority of humanitarian assistance reaches those for whom it is intended”.
Enforcing red lines against Houthi interference has succeeded in a few recent instances. In 2020, the threat of an aid freeze forced SCMCHA to back down from demands of a 2% tax on all humanitarian projects in the country. The previous year, WFP partially suspended aid to secure permission to introduce a biometric registration system aimed at preventing diversion.
“It works,” Vuylsteke said. “WFP did not get kicked out. WFP was not PNG’d (declared persona non grata). Things were not easy. We were a little bit concerned about security. But they didn’t close the door on negotiations.”
“Having your red line very often means a better outcome,” she told The New Humanitarian. “Sometimes, you have to make a really tough choice that will hurt people in the short term to have a very long-term gain.”
On 10 February 2025, the UN paused all operations in Yemen’s Sa’ada governorate, a Houthi stronghold where some of its detained staff had been working during the arrests the previous month.
“This extraordinary and temporary measure seeks to balance the imperative to stay and deliver with the need to have the safety and security of the UN personnel and its partners guaranteed,” said a statement from the UN secretary-general’s office.
The following day, WFP announced that one of its staff members, Ahmed Ba’alawi, had died in custody. Like in the case of al-Hakimi, the specific reason for his arrest and the manner of his death are known only to his captors.
Ba’alawi’s death, Jafarnia said, “highlights even more the need for the Houthis to not be able to bully organisations into bending to their will”.
More than a year-and-a-half after al-Hakimi’s arrest – and with dozens of workers still in detention – aid organisations continue to wrestle with tough choices and their own red lines, with few options for trying to hold the Houthis accountable.
“We’re an NGO dealing with a regime,” the former senior Save the Children staff member told The New Humanitarian. “There’s nothing that we could have done, other than send a team in to go and kidnap Hisham.”
“People get detained, and it’s something you would manage,” they added. “Tell me, has anybody dealt with it any differently?”
Jacob Goldberg reported from Bangkok, Thailand. With reporting support from Buthaina Faroq, a Yemeni rights activist now based in the Netherlands. Edited by Andrew Gully.
