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News > Yemen

Yemen's UN-Backed Gov’t and Separatists Agree to a Ceasefire

  • Fighters from of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) during clashes in the Sheikh Salim area in the southern Abyan province.

    Fighters from of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) during clashes in the Sheikh Salim area in the southern Abyan province. | Photo: AFP

Published 22 June 2020
Opinion

Delegates from both sides are meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to push the implementation of a November 2019 deal.

Yemen's Southern Transitional Council (STC) which is backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the country’s United Nations (U.N.) recognized government have agreed to a ceasefire after months of infighting, the Saudi-led coalition announced Monday.

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Yemen's UAE-Backed Separatists Seize Socotra Island

Delegates from both sides are meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to push the implementation of a November 2019 deal that ended earlier fighting, according to the Coalition’s spokesman, Turki al Maliki.

Violence has exploded between the separatist STC group and U.N. backed government forces since the former declared self-rule over the key port city Aden and other southern provinces earlier this year. 

Intensifying clashes reopened a new front inside the five years long and multifaceted Yemeni war, which has killed over 112,000 people and ignited what the U.N. has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Monday’s announcement also comes after the STC took control of the remote Socotra island in the Gulf of Aden, a UNESCO World Heritage site, amid fighting that threatened to cause irreparable harm to the island's rare plant and animal species.

These recent events have pushed the coalition to urge all parties to “stop the bloodshed by adhering to the Riyadh agreement," which stipulated the handover of heavy weapons, the withdrawal of rival forces, and the formation of a new government. 

A spokesman for the STC, Nizar Haitham, welcomed the coalition’s calls for a ceasefire and de-escalation across Yemen’s south. In a statement, he emphasized the urgent need to implement the Riyadh deal and thanked Saudi Arabia for its diplomatic role.

Leaders within the STC said that while they stood by their declaration of self-rule, they were open to Saudi-led negotiations, TRT has reported citing officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yemen’s devastating war started in late 2014 after the Houthi rebels overran the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, driving the U.N.’s supported government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile.

A Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year to restore Hadi's rule, engaging Yemen in a violent war that has settled into a stalemate.

The UAE announced last year that is was withdrawing from the conflict but observers believe that it continues to be active through its proxies. 

The secessionist council, which is a group of heavily armed and well-financed militias propped up by the UAE since 2015, hopes to restore an independent southern Yemen, which existed from 1967 until unification in 1990.

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