State Department Reviewing Terror Designation of Yemen’s Houthis

The State Department said on Friday that it has initiated a review of the Trump administration’s designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a foreign terror organization and is working quickly to conclude the review.

“The State Department has initiated a review of Ansarallah’s terrorist designations,” a State Department spokesperson said, using another name for the Houthis. “With the humanitarian crisis in Yemen we are working as fast as we can to conduct the review and make a determination.”

Due to the US-backed Saudi-led war in Yemen, the civilian population is facing severe food shortages and is mostly reliant on aid. The terror designation criminalizes transactions with the Houthis, who control territory where 70 percent of Yemen’s population lives, where malnutrition is the most severe.

Because of the conditions in Yemen, the UN has warned that the designation will lead to a famine the world has “not seen for nearly 40 years.” In the face of these warnings, the Trump administration still went through with the designation.

Calls have been growing for President Biden to reverse the designation and end US support for the vicious war. During Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing, Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state nominee, indicated that the new administration will work quickly to end the war.

“The President-elect has made clear that we will end our support for the military campaign led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and I think we will work on that in very short order,” he said.

With such dire conditions in Yemen, every day that the new administration does not act to reverse the designation or end the war, people will starve. While the UN has not formally declared famine in Yemen, people in the country are actively starving to death and have been for years.