Press Briefing: Julien Harneis, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Yemen

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for being here today. We're very pleased to be joined by Julien Harnais, the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen. And Julien, without further ado, I give you the floor. I think everybody knows what you will be talking about today.

Okay. Good afternoon. Thank you for making the time. My name is Julien Harnais. I'm the UN Resident Coordinator and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen and I'm today speaking to you from Sana'a. I wanted to talk about generally the humanitarian situation in Yemen and the consequences of the recent airstrikes yesterday in Hodeidah and as well as in the airport where I was present. En Yémen, nous avons, à la suite du conflit de dix ans, 18 millions de personnes dans le besoin humanitaire, soit environ la moitié de la population. L'année prochaine, en raison de l'aggravation des conditions économiques, pas tant de combats actifs, mais en raison de l'aggravation de l'économie, nous nous attendons à ce que ce nombre passe à 19 millions. Cela signifie que le Yémen, en termes absolus, is the second highest case load of malnourished children. It also means that Yemen is the second highest case load of people who are not able to reach health services. This is absolute numbers, not percentages. It's the third highest number of food insecure people in the world. So we are looking at a massive humanitarian situation. We expect that number to increase to 19 million in next year, 2025. This could get much worse because that is based upon scenarios and our understanding of the situation as it was a couple of months ago. As we look at the possibility of further violence between Ansar Allah in the north of the country and Israël, there could be further impact on civilian infrastructure, harbor, airports and roads, which would lead to immense suffering of the Yemeni population. The airstrikes on the harbor are particularly concerning. Yemen imports approximately 80% of its foodstuffs. So if Hodeidah harbor is disabled, that means that the whole of the population of northern Yemen, which is about 65 to 70% of the population, be an increased humanitarian need. Yesterday, I was at the airport when the airstrikes hit, destroyed the air traffic control, killed the staff who were working there and injured my UNHAS crew member, colleague, who was there with the flight. And the airstrikes landed approximately 300 meters away from where Director General Tedros was and myself. There was one airstrike approximately 300 meters to the south of us and another airstrike about 300 meters to the north of us. What was most frightening about that airstrike wasn't the effect on us, is that the airstrikes took place as a civilian airliner from Yemenia carrying hundreds of Yemenis was about to land. And in fact, the uh that airliner from Yemenia was landing taxiing in when the air traffic control was destroyed fortunately uh that plane was able to land safely and the passengers were able to disembark but it could have been far far worse and so the airport of Sanaa is a civilian infrastructure uh it is the location whereby all of the international humanitarian aid workers who work in the north of the country come in and leave by. So if that airport is disabled, it will paralyze the humanitarian operations. It's also the airport by which thousands of Yemenis who are unable to get decent health care, advanced health care in the country leave to go either to Jordan or to Cairo or eventually to Mumbai to get advanced health care. So it is an absolutely vital humanitarian location. It is essential that all parties to the conflict observe scrupulously international humanitarian law throughout these exchanges. So that's the kind of very quick overview. Very happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Edie, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Julian, on behalf of the United Nations Correspondents Association for doing this briefing. My name is Edith Lederer from the Associated Press. A bunch of follow-ups to what you've said. First on the humanitarian front, you said that Yemen is the second highest for malnourished children and for caseloads and the third highest for food insecurity. Can you tell us who's the highest and Number one and two for food insecurity, just so we don't have to go and dig up those figures. And then I have some follow-up questions about what happened at the airport yesterday.

Thank you, Edith. I'm afraid I'm going to pass on your question because I'm myopically focused on Yemen. Okay. And I don't want to steer you wrong with my answers about other countries.

Okay. At the airport, we actually were never told how many people were in this UN delegation. I assume that Were you traveling with Dr. Tedros, and did you participate in all of the meetings that he had? we we guess that you were in some sort of uh a VIP room um waiting to depart um could you give us some more details on on what exactly happened was there any warning and I'll leave it at that for now.

Okay, thank you Edith. So we were a party of approximately 20 UN personnel in five vehicles. I'm based in Yemen and had previously received Director-General Tedros some two days before. He'd previously been in Aden and had traveled up to Sana'a. Il était ici pour s'engager avec les dirigeants d'Ansar Allah, ou les autorités de facto ici à Sanaa, afin de négocier la libération, ou de contribuer à la négociation de la libération du personnel de l'ONU. Il y avait une cinquantaine de personnes détenues par les Nations Unies, les ONG et la société civile en juin dernier. by the authorities in Sanaa and more persons from outside, another 50 or so taken from government services. We have been engaged in a long-running negotiation in order to obtain the release of our colleagues and Director-General Tedros had visited Aden to meet with the government of Yemen there and then had travelled up to Sanaa to discuss with the authorities how to obtain the release of our colleagues. Et je suis avec le directeur général. Et sur la base de discussions et nous étions dans le, euh, dans une salle VIP, qui est à côté du terminal principal. Comme vous pouvez l'imaginer, l'aéroport de Sanaa est un aéroport international de Sanaa. C'est un très petit bâtiment par rapport à la plupart des aéroports internationaux. Et euh, et les frappes aériennes ont eu lieu à peu près à 16h43. 00 p.m. et non seulement évidemment, nous n'avons aucune indication de toute attaque aérienne, mais nous ne nous souvenons pas de la dernière fois qu'il y a eu des frappes aériennes dans le Sinaï pendant la journée. Et la coalition saoudienne a suspendu their military operations some two years ago, but during the period of their operation, they would tend to bomb at night. The US and UK coalition, which has been retaliating or responding to Ansar Allah air strikes and missiles in the Red Sea, have tended to bomb after 11 p.m. at night to early mornings. So, an airstrike on a civilian location in the middle of the day, just before an Airbus 320 was about to land and as a UN party was there, was completely unexpected.

Deshi.

Oh, Yidi? Just Just a quick follow-up, which I'm sure we all want to know. So what happened when the airstrike took place? What did you all do? Did people fall on the, you know, go to the ground, go under furniture?

Well, the UN Department of Security, Safety and Security, UN DSS a répondu de manière très professionnelle. Ils ont déplacé les collègues hors du bâtiment VIP dans cinq véhicules blindés qui attendaient la délégation. Nous avons attendu dans les véhicules blindés pendant une quarantaine de minutes afin de savoir ce qui s'était passé, quelle était la situation, afin de pouvoir également prendre soin du membre d'équipage blessé. One of the UNHAS crew members was hit in the lower leg by shrapnel, who lost a lot of blood. I saw the blood on the tarmac this morning as we said goodbye to Tedros. He lost a lot of blood and had to be evacuated to a hospital inside Sana'a. So we stayed to make sure that the crew were okay and evacuate them to the center of Sana'a and to make sure it was safe for us to move. And thank you for the questions, Judith.

Could I just... One quick follow-up. Did the whole team stay in Sana'a at a hotel or at the UN compound overnight before you were able, like the airport was reopened today and you were able to leave?

So the, we moved the whole party, including the crew, do not normally stay in Sana'a, we moved to a UN compound and Avant de pouvoir voler, il fallait vérifier les dégâts de la piste. Il n'y a plus de contrôle aérien, donc il n'est possible de voler que de jour. Il fallait donc vérifier l'état de l'avion et de la piste, s'assurer que l'équipage va bien, et aussi voir comment s'est passée l'opération sur le membre d'équipage. He went for four hours of surgery and fortunately we've been able to move him out with Director-General Tedros this afternoon.

Hi, this is Xu Dejie with China Central Television. A follow-up, you just said that Dr. Tedros was there engaging with Ansar Allah to talk about the staff that being kept by Houthis. Do you have any more updates on that? And secondly, you also mentioned the dire humanitarian situation given the fact that the harbor of Hodeidah is key to the humanitarian foods as well as the airport which is for international staffers. So how would the airstrikes from Israël directly affect your operation there? Thank you.

Thank you so much for the question. So on the detention, as I noted before, some 100 persons were detained in June of this year, and of which 13 of them are UN personnel, and then a further four UN personnel were detained in 2021 and 2023. En total, 17 personnes ont été détenues. Il y a environ six semaines, un personnel de l'ONU a été libéré et deux personnes d'ONG ont également été libérées. Toutes nos personnes, tous les collègues de l'ONU qui ont été détenus, ont travaillé sur des projets humanitaires et d'aide pendant toute cette période. They are covered by UN privileges and immunities and they should not be detained. We have repeatedly called upon the authorities in Sana'a for their release. We have seen over the last weeks some slight improvements. One person has been able to speak with their families at least one occasion. And as I noted, one UN personnel and two NGOs were released some six weeks ago. The discussions that myself and Director-General Tedros engaged in here were to seek a way forward so that all UN personnel and non-UN personnel, NGOs and civil society could be released. In our discussions with various senior officials in Sana'a, et ils ont pris des engagements et nous espérons qu'ils conduiront à la libération éventuelle de nos collègues. Et en ce qui concerne le, euh, je vais m'arrêter là et ensuite je vais passer à la discussion sur le port. Donc, euh, comme nous l'avons noté, 80 % de la nourriture de l'ONU passe par le port de Hodeidah, pour le, pardon, 80 % des besoins alimentaires du Yémen pour le Nord comes through Hodeidah harbor and I would say close to 90 percent, 95 percent of all the medical supplies. So the harbor is absolutely vital. If that harbor is decapacitated and there have been numerous airstrikes on that harbor, There was airstrikes twice yesterday, some days ago, the tugs which are used to bring in the big ships, two tugs were destroyed, and there have been previous airstrikes in and around the harbor over the last months. If that harbor does not operate, then we will see a dramatic and sudden decrease in the humanitarian situation in Yemen. The harbor is a civilian location and the Security Council has established two missions in order to assure that. One is the UNMHA, which was set up as a result of the Stockholm Agreement, and their purpose is to ensure that the harbour is used only for civilian purposes. The other UN mission is UNVIN, so the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism, which is not based in Yemen, but is actually based in Djibouti. They are responsible for ensuring that all containers and products that are taken into Hodeidah harbor are consistent with Security Council resolutions. So there's two UN missions whose only job is to ensure that Hodeidah remains only of use for civilian Civilian reasons, so it's a civilian facility. There is no doubt about that. And the UN works to ensure that. And any damage to it will lead to massive suffering for Yemenis. Thank you.

But you didn't really answer my question how this round of airstrikes affected your operation there. Has it been delayed or paused or suspended?

So the airstrikes of some days ago, which destroyed the two tugs, et qui a été estimé à une réduction de la capacité du port de 50%. Maintenant, nous ne savons pas combien de temps cette réduction de capacité sera et nous n'avons pas encore fait une analyse approfondie de l'impact des frappes aériennes d'hier parce que ces frappes aériennes ont eu lieu à 18h50. Nous sommes donc toujours en train de recueillir des informations et d'essayer de comprendre cela.

Merci, Gabriel, puis Javier.

Thank you, Julian. This is Gabriel Elizondo from Al Jazeera English. I also have a few follow-ups on the airport incident, and I'll ask them one at a time, hopefully to make it a little easier. I just want to clarify, you did say there were two strikes and one hit 300 meters south of where your team was and one hit 300 meters north of where your team was at the airport. Can you just confirm that is what you said?

Yeah, that's my understanding at the time we went. measuring the precise distance.

No problem. No, I understand. No, I just want to make sure that that was correct, at least. And how many in that room that you folks were at, at the airport, how many UN personnel were in

that room, roughly?

Yeah, it was approximately 15 UN personnel in the room and five UN personnel outside of the building.

Okay, and how did--

So 15 inside, five outside, approximately.

Sure, fine, approximately. And how Dr. Tedros and his team were able to get to Amman, how did he get out of the country?

So, well, obviously we moved out of the VIP lounge, waited 40 minutes, and then after that, evacuated, well moved back rather to the UN compound where we overnighted and then over the evening we worked out how we could move the plane out. The UNHAS plane had already landed, had refueled and the plane was, the crew after they had medically evacuated, casualty evacuated their colleague, secured the plane so that it would be possible to use this morning or today, the next day. And this morning, the crew came in and went in to verify the condition of the plane, found that it was in, that it had not been damaged, and therefore we were able to use that plane to move Director-General Tedros and his delegation.

But the air traffic control tower is still completely non-operational, correct?

That's correct. I mean, on ANHAS pilots, and, you know, I can't say for other pilots, but certainly ANHAS pilots during daylight hours are able to take off without air traffic control.

Thank you. And my last question is, and I know you're dealing with a lot of very important humanitarian issues in Yemen, so I'm sorry to ask you these detailed questions about one incident, but I just wanted to get clarification because you were there. So thank you. Just my last follow up is clearly this was a close call. It was unexpected. There were no warnings. My question is, when someone as high level as Dr. Tedros is in Yemen, do you normally or would your office or someone normally inform Israël that he was there because Israël is part of this, a party to this conflict, or is that not normal protocol?

Et il est non et nous avons un protocole pour tous les travailleurs humanitaires d'informer les différentes parties au conflit. Et je ne vais pas entrer dans les détails précisément quelles parties au conflit nous informons. Et mais je pense que le plus gros problème est que les parties au conflit ont l'obligation de s'assurer qu'elles ne frappent pas une cible civile. and not striking civilians. The obligation is on them, not on us. We don't need to prove we're civilians. They need to prove that they are hitting a military target. Sanaa airport has not been a military target since 2016. I was in Yemen at the beginning of the conflict and I remember the day when all of the military capacities were destroyed at Sanaa airport and that was nine years ago and Sanaa airport has been subsequently been repeatedly bombed over the, you know, for many years. So it's a civilian location, it is used by the United Nations, it's used by the International Committee for the Red Cross, it is used for civilian flights, that is its purpose and so all parties to the conflict have an obligation to respect the civilian nature of that facility and to observe international humanitarian law. The responsibility is on them. Thank you. Javier.

Yes, my name is Javier from the EFE Spanish news service. A follow-up on the 100 people still detained. Nous comprenons qu'il n'y a pas d'accusations formelles, n'est-ce pas? Mais de quoi sont-ils accusés? Et sont-ils tous accusés de la même chose ou y a-t-il des cas différents?

Merci. Merci Xavier. Comme vous l'avez dit à juste titre, parmi les personnes qui ont été détenues en juin, nous n'avons pas été informés d'accusations formelles. et il n'y a pas eu, nous ne sommes pas au courant de déclarations sur les individus spécifiques. Les détenus de 2021 et 2023, les autorités ici ont diffusé diverses accusations contre eux et des soi-disant confessions. et où ils ont été accusés d'espionnage, une accusation que les Nations Unies ne reconnaissent pas. Vous avez une autre question?

Puis je vais passer à Ephraïm, puis à Edie, puis nous allons conclure pour permettre à Julien de reprendre ses.

Activités. Pouvez-vous nous donner plus de détails sur l'espionnage?

You know, I mean, the thing is, we don't believe, we don't recognize it. So we don't really go into the, we're not going to be repeating charges that we do not adhere to. And if you wish to dig into that, those allegations are on the internet and I'm sure you would be able to find them relatively easily. But as I said at the beginning, all of our staff in the United Nations, we're here for Yemenis. We've been here for decades. We've been here since the '60s. Our only purpose is humanitarian assistance and, where possible, the development of the country. And our colleagues have risked their lives. We've had colleagues killed here in Yemen. we've had colleagues kidnapped. You know, the only reason we're here is to serve Yemeni people in situations of dire humanitarian need.

Thank you.

Ephraim, and then Iri.

Thank you so much. My name is Ephraim Kosaifi with Arab News Daily. About the UN staff in Yemen, given what's happening elsewhere and the systematic attacks we've been seeing for the past 14 months on healthcare workers, whether in Palestine or during the war in Lebanon. I know every one of your staff is there to serve and all of that, but what is the morale, really? How much of a trepidation are they looking to the events around them and the way the healthcare and the humanitarian workers are being treated in these wars? Thank you.

Thank you, Adrian. That's a very humane question. The conditions, both as a result, I mean, obviously, firstly, there's a result of the detention, not just UN personnel, but also NGO personnel. We're completely perturbed. I have many colleagues who and for weeks were very anxious about even coming to the office or going out on field missions. And similarly for NGO staff and even for myself. I was thinking about goodness, what if they start trolling, somebody picks up my phone and starts trolling through all my WhatsApp messages with my wife or something. you know, when you're in that kind of environment, you're operating in that environment, it's very heavy for everyone. And then in addition, so you've got those challenges, and we've seen some improvements in the operating conditions in the last, say, two, three months. There's been some changes in the personnel, in the authorities in Sanaa, which has meant that some of the problems that we saw have reduced. So we have been having international staff have no longer been asked to leave Yemen, which was the case up until about three, four months ago, where every week we would have an international staff member asked to leave. The discussions that we have with the authorities now are much more focused and directed towards finding solutions for Yemenis in need. The agreements, which were so difficult to achieve in the past, have pour l'ONU et pour les ONG, nous avons pu conclure rapidement. Nous avons donc vu des améliorations dans les conditions d'exploitation, ce qui a réduit dans une certaine mesure les préoccupations du personnel yéménite. Mais évidemment, quand ils voient encore que 16 de leurs collègues sont détenus, et que le personnel des ONG et le personnel national des ONG sont détenus, il y a évidemment beaucoup d'anxiété. Et si vous ajoutez à cela, air strikes and the fear of more air strikes, the concerns, the fear of what's going to happen next. Are we going to see attacks against bridges, roads, electricity systems and other civilian infrastructure? What does that mean for them? We have 3000 staff across the country and we're moving around constantly. What's going to happen to them? And obviously, we follow the news. we see what happens in other countries, you know, my staff and not just my staff, NGO staff and health workers in government clinics, they look at that and there's a lot of fear. So, you know, it's very difficult to keep keep people focused and working for vulnerable Yemenis. But fortunately, that is the case. Everybody's getting on with what's required, but it is a very challenging environment.

I will take a final question from Edie.

Thank you very much, Julie. A couple of follow-ups. Who was the highest-ranking Ansar Allah official that you met with? And you -- I wonder if you could elaborate. You said that they gave you commitments that you hope are going to lead to the release of these -- these people who have been detained. Could you elaborate at all on the kinds of commitments? that you got and on the attacks yesterday the Israeli government said that they attacked the airport because the Houthi is used the airport and um sorted the Iranians to ship in things um what's your message to Israël in response to the airport, which you've stressed to us is a civilian airport.

Thank you very much, Edith. So the, in terms, so we, Director General Tedros and myself met the, and I'll be using titles which they use to refer to themselves. the Prime Minister of the Government of Change and Reconstruction. Obviously, the Prime Minister of the internationally recognized Government is another person, and that person is in Aden, in the temporary capital. So we, the Director General, met the Prime Minister of the de facto authority, met the Foreign Minister, Mr. Jamal Amar, and met a member of the Supreme Political Council, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi. Those were the three meetings. The Director-General also met with families of the detainees, which was obviously, as you can imagine, a very emotional meeting and was certainly, for me as a UN staff member, was probably the most important of the meetings. The Les engagements qui nous ont été donnés, euh, relatifs à la, un, la possibilité de libération et, euh, euh, un chemin vers cela, et les conditions dans lesquelles ils sont détenus, euh, je ne pourrai pas entrer dans les détails à ce sujet. Euh, en termes de, euh, l'aéroport. There is only one flight other than the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, that uses Sana'a airport, and that's Yemenia airline, which flies an Airbus 320 to Amman, Jordan. That is the only location that they fly to, and that is the result of an international negotiation. Et maintenant, je suis en Jordanie, mais je suis en train de faire un manège, mais en même temps, le niveau de scrutin et de sécurité dans un aéroport, c'est, je dirais, un des meilleurs du monde. C'est un peu comme si j'essayais de prendre quelque chose de plus intéressant que mon micro. Vous savez, il y a un niveau de scrutin là-bas. Et donc, et Il s'agit d'un aéroport civil. Il y a un vol civil à destination d'une ville, ce qui peut être facilement vérifié par les États membres qui souhaitent en savoir plus sur ce vol. Comme je l'ai dit, ce vol est le résultat d'un accord international.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. And we will end on this note. Julien, thank you so, so much for taking the time to be with us today, for taking all of these questions. Thank you so much for your availability. All right, thank you. Uh, I will take two minutes to go back to the office to grab a few more pieces of paper for you, and I will be right back.