*One of the latest key shifts in Yemen's conflict has been the rupture between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in southern Yemen. The recent development has exposed a power struggle that ended the UAE's military presence in Yemen and highlighted its harmful role — harm that cries out for accountability but remains ignored.
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have long backed rival factions competing for control of southern Yemen, undermining coalition cohesion. By late 2025, this rivalry erupted into an open political and military confrontation after Saudi Arabia publicly accused the UAE of fueling unrest in the south and east of Yemen and acting beyond coalition coordination. The UAE rejected the accusations, insisting instead on its role in promoting Yemen's security and stability.
For most Yemenis, however, the UAE's overreach has long been visible. Following the commencement of the Saudi-led coalition's military campaign in Yemen in 2015, Abu Dhabi provided military, logistical and political support to armed groups operating outside government control — most prominently the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) and its allied forces across southern and western Yemen. In practice, the Emirates exercised proxy rule, reshaping power structures that later became engines of abuse. In 2017, former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi bluntly accused the UAE of behaving like an occupier.
Since the start of the war, coercive control and systemic abuse have defined the Emirati role in Yemen. The United Nations panels of experts and other international and local rights organizations have extensively documented these practices for years. As early as 2015, Emirati-backed forces in southern Yemen were implicated in arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and torture carried out across a network of secret prisons operating beyond judicial oversight. This project targeted journalists, political critics and perceived opponents. Some detainees died under torture or following threats that have been traced directly to Emirati officials. Subsequent U.N. investigations concluded that these violations were not the result of rogue local actors, but unfolded within a command structure shaped by Abu Dhabi's material support, operational direction and, in some cases, direct orders issued by Emirati military commanders on the ground.
Last month, the Internationally Recognized Government of Yemen (IRG) — with Saudi backing — granted international media access to former Emirati-run military sites in southern Yemen, exposing detention facilities linked to the secret prisons. Before the rupture between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government were aware of these sites but refrained from public criticism. Their exposure now reflects a recalibration driven less by accountability than by an intensifying media and political dispute between the former partners.
International media outlets have revealed aspects of the UAE-run prisons, including shipping-container cells, isolation units and testimonies of torture, sexual abuse and enforced disappearances attributable to UAE personnel and allied Yemeni forces. Following these revelations, families of detainees — some held for years without charge — publicly demanded information about the fate of their loved ones. Families have diligently spoken out about those prisons for years.
In a recent statement, the Abductees' Mothers Association claimed to possess documented testimonies confirming the existence of secret detention sites across Aden, Hadramout and Socotra, where detainees were arbitrarily held, tortured and forcibly disappeared outside of any legal framework. The association also warned that closing such facilities without independent investigations risks destroying evidence and allowing perpetrators to evade accountability.
A daunting set of questions thus arises: Can the UAE, or any other state, enter Yemen and leave at will, abandoning victims of its wrongdoing? What happens to Abu Dhabi's record of human rights abuses in Yemen? Should it not be held accountable? Do its victims not deserve justice? Most crucially, who has the power to hold it accountable?
It is well established that all warring parties in Yemen have committed grave human rights abuses and war crimes. My reporting for Democracy in Exile since January 2024 — alongside my broader body of work — documents violations by all major actors, including the Houthis, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the United States, the United Kingdom and others. Focusing on the UAE does not downplay the crimes of other parties, which are ongoing and well documented, but examines one case in depth. The UAE's role in Yemen offers a revealing test case: whether any actor can escape accountability for the harm inflicted on the Yemeni people.
The truth of the matter is clear: The UAE has largely hidden behind the Saudi-led coalition to evade any accountability. From the outset of the war, the coalition provided a convenient legal and political shield that Abu Dhabi utilized to diffuse responsibility for its conduct in Yemen. Coalition operations were marked by opacity, with no clear accounting of which states carried out a particular action in many instances. This ambiguity was not incidental.
Under international law, states are required to investigate alleged violations committed by their forces and to ensure respect for the laws of war by units operating under their direction or control. Instead, the UAE and other coalition members routinely withheld information about their individual roles, deflecting scrutiny onto the coalition as a collective entity.
The international system failed to hold Abu Dhabi accountable despite extensive and credible evidence. That failure became structural in 2021, when the U.N. Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen — the only independent, international and impartial mechanism systematically documenting violations — was terminated following sustained lobbying by coalition members, including the UAE. Since then, no comparable body has been mandated to investigate or document abuses in Yemen, leaving a deliberate accountability vacuum.
International human rights mechanisms have exposed their own limitations elsewhere. If the world failed to act in Gaza, why should anyone believe that these tools can hold the UAE accountable in Yemen amid real questions of political will? There appear to be no remaining, realistic mechanisms available today. While the U.N. Group of Eminent Experts no longer documents abuses, the internationally recognized government's National Commission to Investigate Alleged Violations of Human Rights (NCIAVHR) continues this work.
Yemen can leverage these records to pursue cases against Abu Dhabi, seeking justice and redress for victims. The newly appointed minister of legal affairs, Ishraq al-Maqtary — who led NCIAVHR and has tirelessly documented abuses since the war began — must now spearhead this difficult task. Yemen's future depends on accountability, thorough documentation and ensuring no actor escapes the consequences of their actions — including and particularly the UAE. A future marred by unaddressed injustice and a lack of accountability is, in fact, no future at all for tens of millions of Yemenis deserving of better from the international community.
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*This article was first written for & published by DAWN.org
*This article was first written for & published by DAWN.org
