Stockholm Agreement Yemen Summary

Unfortunately, the city is a critical area of the Stockholm Agreement, which needs to put more emphasis on mediating agreements between the parties on de-escalation of hostilities and opening lasting humanitarian corridors to alleviate the suffering of Taz residents. What has been agreed in Sweden is therefore not a major political breakthrough, but an increased international pressure, which is by no means guaranteed in the future, and a degree of pragmatism on the part of the Yemeni parties and their international supporters, which may not exist. Even then, the Houthis and the government were at pains to make the point that both the prisoner swap and the Hodeida deal were not political agreements and are not meant to be seen as an opening to a broader peace deal. The United Nations will also need to continue, if not strengthen, the concerted international pressure that has led to the Stockholm agreement. In the hope of building on the agreement and giving the United Nations a stronger mandate in Yemen, particularly for a hodeida peacekeeping observer mission, the UK revised a UN Security Council resolution it had drafted prior to talks with Sweden to establish a declaration of support for the Stockholm Agreement. The draft resolution contains a number of requests from the UN humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, which would help ease the current economic quagmire. What`s new? A UN-brokered agreement to demilitarise the Yemeni port city of Hodeida is stuck. The Yemeni government insists on a complete handover of Hodeida by the Huthis, which the latter rejects. Meanwhile, Houthi attacks on Saudi territory and Saudi airstrikes in Yemen have intensified in the past three months.

A weakened UN diplomatic effort in Yemen is in dired of an international shot in the arm to remove obstacles to implementing the Stockholm Agreement, of which the submilitarise Hodeida city and ports forms the core. In May, faced with the parties` inability to work out a mutually acceptable process, the UN endorsed unilateral Huthi redeployments from Hodeida, Ras Issa and Salif ports. The internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi reacted angrily, calling the Houthi redistributives false pretences and accusing UN Special Envoy Martin Griffith of bias and even briefly banning contact with him. The Hadi government has not yet withdrawn from its maximalist interpretation of the agreement: that all Houthi personnel be replaced by government forces, a claim that the Houthis reject and that the UN says it does not reflect what has been agreed in Sweden. Under such a compromise, these territories would not be protected by pre-2014 forces (the government`s declared position) or by the forces there today (the implicit opinion of the Houthis). Instead, the UN could check the current local security forces to ensure that they are professional personnel and that their high-ranking commanders are in the military and security services before 2014.