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Almost 9 in 10 deaths and injuries from explosive weapons in Yemen are civilian

Patients injured by airstrikes in Joumhouri hospital, Sana'a, Yemen, July 2015. Credit: OCHA / Charlotte Cans

When explosive weapons are used in Yemen, 86 per cent of the people killed or injured are civilians, according to a report: “State of crisis: explosive weapons in Yemen,” issued this week by OCHA and NGO Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

This number rises to 95 per cent when explosive weapons are used in populated areas.

According to the report, nearly 4,500 civilians were killed or injured by explosive weapons during the first seven months of 2015, with the single biggest danger to civilians being air strikes. This means explosive weapons have killed or injured more civilians in Yemen this year than in any other country in the world.

“Yemen is the worst country in the world this year for civilians affected by explosive violence, more devastating even than the crisis in Syria and Iraq,” wrote report author, Robert Perkins.

Between January and July 2015, 21 civilians and 4 armed actors have been killed or injured by explosive weapons.

The authors call on all States and armed groups to refrain from using explosive weapons - particularly weapons with wide-area effects — in Yemen’s towns and cities. It also reiterates the UN Secretary-General’s call for States to develop and adopt practical measures and guidance to reduce the humanitarian impact of explosive weapons in urban areas. Ministers met in Vienna this week to discuss these issues.

Through the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution, parties to conflict are obliged to limit loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects as far as possible according to International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Across the globe, greater compliance with IHL by all parties to conflict would significantly enhance the protection of civilians from the effects of explosive weapons.

The trauma caused by explosive weapon attacks in populated areas is unfathomable. In Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, one resident, Mohammed Sarhan, described the moment on 20 April that an air strike hit a missile base at Faj Attan in his neighbourhood. “It was like the doors of hell opened, I felt the house lift up and fall,” he said.

Another resident, Osamah al-Fakih, said that when speaking to his sister after the bomb attack, “I could hear my two-year-old nephew crying out in fear and screaming ‘Mama, Mama.’ His voice is still resonating in my head as each shell goes off.”

Explosive weapons such as those used in Yemen vary widely in their design and delivery method. They include bombs, rockets, mortars and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), but each share the same aim: to fragment on detonation, and to kill, injure or destroy anything in the vicinity as effectively as possible.

The use of explosive weapons in civilian populated areas not only kills and injures civilian residents, but it also destroys their electricity grids and water and sanitation systems, forces schools and health clinics to shut down, decimates people’s livelihoods and causes mass displacement, effectively damaging lives for years to come.

Even when conflicts finally end, these towns and cities will remain heavily contaminated with explosive remnants of war for years, depriving civilians of access to land, schools, water points, religious sites and other locations and putting children in particular at risk.

Author Robert Perkins continued to describe the everyday reality in Yemen: “An already vulnerable population is now faced with a country reduced to rubble by falling bombs and rockets. Their homes destroyed, their families torn apart, it will take a many years to recover from the last few terrible months… The crisis in Yemen shows exactly why explosive weapons with wide-area effects have no place being used in populated areas. All parties to this conflict must immediately stop the bombing of civilians and civilian areas."