Yemen is in the process of descending into full civil war. The horrendous violence of the Houthis against civilians is now being intensified, this time by the Saudi lead military attacks on populated areas in Aden, Sanaa, Taez and Hodaida. In Aden, the number of civilian casualties continues to rise as groups of civilians take up arms against Houthi aggression, while warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition bomb rebel targets to the north.
The justification for this military intervention and massive escalation of violence was the request made by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi for support to "protect Yemen and the Yemeni people from the Houthi destructive aggression". The United Nations has been, in effect a passive bystander while some States - the US, UK, Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, have come out in support. There is nothing in latest UN Security Council resolution to authorise use of force in this situation, nor in any of the previous Resolutions, on the contrary, they contain language which show what steps should be taken to actually uphold the National Dialogue so that there would be no recourse to supposed military solutions.
In the absence of authority from the Security Council, force by another State can only be lawfully used in self-defence. Hadie invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter on collective self-defence to request military intervention. He probably did not have to, since there are claims of legality if intervention is made with the consent of the state on whose territory the force is being used. The latter is always murky, and in the case of Yemen particularly so since the legitimacy of Hadi’s Presidency has to be questioned.
