The terrorist Houthi militia, the Iranian arm in Yemen, revealed that it had received $1.5 million from the United Nations under the pretext of implementing a demining program.

And the Houthi leader the so-called Abdul Mohsen al-Tawoos, who was appointed by the militia as Secretary-General of the so-called Supreme Council for Humanitarian Affairs, said that they had agreed with the United Nations to allocate one million five hundred thousand dollars as "urgent assistance to expedite demining."

The United Nations had previously provided support to the Houthis in 2019 under the same pretext. However, the militia used that support, in turn, to expand the circle of laying mines in areas populated by civilians, according to identical media sources.

Yemeni activists, journalists and media professionals launched a campaign under the hashtag: #UNreward-forHouthi-mines, during which they criticized the international organization against the backdrop of supporting the Houthis with an amount of 1.5 million dollars, under the pretext of removing the mines that they continue to plant.

Rights warning:

Two Yemeni human rights defenders warned of the danger of the United Nations allocating $1.5 million to the Houthi militia, stressing that the putschists would use it to manufacture mines, not remove them. The two experts suggested that the militia allocates these funds to the manufacture and planting of mines and the killing of civilians in various cities, especially since it has turned Yemen into a large minefield.

The head of the Tamken Yemeni Women's Rights Foundation, Zaafaran Zaid, said that providing more support to the militia that lays mines means more civilian casualties, stressing that it is a full-fledged war crime. And Zaid revealed the militia's use of fertilizers and many materials entered through the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the local mine industry, accusing the head of the FAO, the Lebanese military expert Salah Hajj Hassan, who is affiliated with the Hezbollah militia, of being involved in smuggling fertilizers.

In his turn, the head of the Yemeni Rasd Organization for Freedom and Rights, Arafat Humran, denounced the identity of UN organizations with the Houthis, saying: It is not surprising that the Houthis demand additional support as long as the United Nations is content to be an instrument for the coup. He added that what the UN organizations are doing in Yemen is a crime against humanity no less than the crimes of the Houthi. He made it clear that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights distributed 30 four-wheel-drive vehicles for the purpose of clearing mines, and the Houthis benefited from them in planting explosives and transporting leaders away from targeting aviation as they carry United Nations flags, indicating that planting mines is one of the unilateral crimes committed by the Houthi exclusively, and it is internationally prohibited according to the Convention Ottawa.

He pointed out that the Houthis planted 1.5 million mines, some of them in Hodeidah, after the ill-fated Sweden Agreement, which provided for demining and opening safe corridors for relief, revealing that there are about 10,000 victims between dead and wounded, most of whom are children because of mines.

$16 million to plant mines:

Masam’s engineering team said that about half a million mines were removed, pointing out that planting one mine costs $30, while removing it costs $300. And the militia is using 300 schools to manufacture mines, in clear violation of the use of civilian objects.

And Humran denounced the United Nations' neglect of this danger, saying: "The strange thing is that the international organizations have not yet declared who is the party that is laying mines, and all their statements and reports are rubbery, including all parties and equity between the victim and the executioner." He accused the United Nations of supporting the militia with about 16 million dollars to clear mines but not a single mine was removed, but on the contrary, the amount was used to manufacture and develop mines.

And the Houthi militia alone is among the parties to the conflict in Yemen, which is using mines in its war against Yemenis, and it has planted about two million mines in several areas of the country since 2015, according to the estimates of mine conflict experts.

And the Houthi militia is also responsible for killing more than 20,000 civilians with these mines.

Since the beginning of the war, the Houthi militia has resorted to laying large numbers of mines in several Governorates and has tried to hide them in different shapes, colors and methods. And these mines, which were planted indiscriminately and without maps, claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and seriously injured tens of thousands of them, and turned some of them into persons with disabilities.