What practical steps are available to Yemen to end the UAE's role in the coalition?

Al Jazeera Net - Special

The legitimate Yemeni government broke its silence and blamed the UAE for the coup against the legitimate authority in the interim capital of Aden and asked President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to stop Abu Dhabi's participation in the coalition.

Yemeni Minister of Transport Saleh al-Jibwani said that the government is preparing political and human rights files condemning the UAE and proving its involvement in committing violations, building secret prisons, and acts affecting national sovereignty, adding that it will submit these files to international bodies and courts.

On the nature of these steps, a government source told Al Jazeera Net that the government is considering filing a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council against the UAE accusing it of supporting the coup of the Southern Transitional Council in Aden, in preparation for announcing its expulsion from Yemen and ending its role there radically.

According to a Yemeni Foreign Ministry official, Al Jazeera Net contacted the government to mobilize international positions that would stop the UAE's financial support for all the forces it established in Aden, and to withdraw all weapons provided by the Southern Transitional Council until its capabilities exceed the capabilities of the legitimate government.

Practical steps
Regarding the practical steps that the legitimate government can take to drive the UAE out of Yemen, end its role in the coalition, and hold it accountable for the crimes it has committed, international law expert Abdul Majid al-Marari pointed to two key steps that the government should resort to.

Al-Marari told Al-Jazeera Net that the first step is to consider Yemen as an occupying country for parts of its territory, so it should resort to the International Court of Justice as the only international judicial body specialized in considering agreements and interpreting treaties between states and violating them.

He said the government could then extract a ruling from international justice ordering the UAE to leave and end the occupation. But this move, according to Almarari, requires a bold political decision from the Yemeni government.

The second step requires the Yemeni government to have evidence condemning the UAE and prove its involvement in war crimes against humanity, especially as it is accused of using mercenaries to do so.

Evidence must be available for recourse to the ICC through Article 12, paragraph 3, of the Rome Statute of the Specialized War Crimes Tribunal, as it is the only gateway that the Yemeni president can sign, and has the right to give the international court jurisdiction over crimes committed in his country. The request will then be submitted to the Security Council to issue a decision from the criminal court to confront the UAE.

Tawfiq al-Humaidi, head of the Geneva-based SAM, said the Yemeni government must, under the UN charter, file a formal complaint with the United Nations and the Security Council complaining about the UAE's role and interference in Yemen and its contribution to the chaos. Legal and clear condemnation of its actions.

Al-Humaidi told Al Jazeera Net that the legitimate government is demanding evidence and evidence of what it will submit in the complaint, and that it has the right to sue the UAE and ask for compensation after submitting evidence to the Security Council.

In this context, he pointed out that Yemen is listed under Chapter VII of the Security Council and has a comprehensive periodic review through which periodically lists the names of those who obstruct peace in the country, so that the legitimate government can ask the Security Council to include the UAE and its members among the obstructionist bodies.

Government positions
But international law specialist Mohammed Shweiter said that the positions and statements of the legitimate government would shorten the description of the legal status of the UAE presence in Yemen, and would constitute a serious legal embarrassment for the UAE, the United Nations and the Security Council.

The law alone does not work. The legitimate government, its foreign ministry and its permanent representative to the United Nations should intensify their contacts with the permanent members of the Security Council to ensure that the UAE complies with the desire of the legitimate government.

He said that the partial withdrawal of the UAE forces from Yemen recently was due to the recommendations of the expert group that Abu Dhabi should withdraw its forces if it decided to support the secession of the south in order to find a distance from the international legal issue, because the presence of its forces on the ground is one of the most important criteria of the conflict in international law.

Only logistical support, as Iran does, is controversial because it is regarded as an international conflict from the perspective of international law, albeit politically, according to the same expert.

The limits of the challenge
Yemeni parliamentarian Abdul Karim al-Islami rules out that the Yemeni government will go further than what it said in its recent statements because it is a weak and dependent government.

Al-Islami told Al-Jazeera Net that the positions expressed by the government are merely an attempt to sow ash in Laayoune to alleviate the public reaction against the coalition because of the emergence of its real objectives in the dismantling of Yemen and the elimination of legitimacy, while stressing that what the UAE is doing in Yemen is in full coordination with Saudi Arabia.