The legitimacy trap: How international institutions sustain the Houthis' hold on Yemen

On September 2, 2025, four days after Israeli airstrikes killed Ahmed al-Rahawi and 12 other Houthi cabinet members in Yemen, the chief of mission for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) met with Houthi Foreign Ministry official Ismail al-Mutawakkil in Sanaa. According to the Houthi outlet Saba, she offered condolences for the “crime committed by the Zionist entity,” expressed “solidarity” with Yemen, and promised the ICRC’s plans to provide assistance were unchanged. While the language the Houthi outlet attributed to the ICRC mission chief is likely inaccurate, the organization could not publicly dispute it. Contradicting the Houthi narrative would mean losing access, endangering staff, and even shutting down operations across northern Yemen, where two-thirds of the population lives. As a result, the statement stands in Houthi media as international validation of their government’s legitimacy, used to project authority both domestically and internationally.

For years, the prevailing assumption was that the Houthis' survival depended on battlefield victories and Iranian support. Both are essential, but there is a third critical and often overlooked factor: the weaponization of international engagement. In 2018, as pro-government forces prepared to retake Hodeidah from the Houthis, the international community intervened, warning of a humanitarian catastrophe and the potential destruction of the port. The resulting Stockholm Agreement imposed a cease-fire that entrenched Houthi control. The port was ultimately destroyed anyway in Israeli airstrikes after the Houthis used it to launch over 130 attacks on Red Sea shipping. The international community prevented the port's destruction by blocking its liberation, only to see it destroyed later on the Houthis' terms. In a pattern that continues to repeat itself, engagement without accountability strengthens rather than moderates Houthi behavior.

Legitimacy through humanitarian operations

An October 2025 article in the Houthi newspaper Al-Thawra described ICRC officials touring Houthi “demining operations,” which is a grotesque inversion of reality given that Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented the Houthis as the primary source of Yemen's landmine crisis.

In Houthi-controlled areas, the United Nations coordinates humanitarian access through Houthi-appointed officials on the Houthis’ terms. The World Health Organization (WHO) negotiates programs with Houthi health ministry officials. The World Food Program (WFP) distributes aid through Houthi networks. Each agency faces what appears to be an impossible choice: Either engage and legitimize Houthi control or withdraw and abandon vulnerable populations.

This framing is false and has been deliberately engineered by the Houthis themselves. The pattern is consistent: The Houthis sabotage aid delivery through theft, extortion, and staff detention; force its suspension; and then negotiate the resumption of aid on terms that consolidate their control. When the UN suspended operations in Saada after a WFP employee died in custody and pulled back from Houthi areas following mass detentions, the Houthis escalated. Each suspension becomes a new source of leverage.

The claim that populations in Houthi territory have no alternative is equally false. Yemen's government controls significant territory where aid can be delivered without interference. Yet international resources remain concentrated in Houthi-controlled Sanaa, even as populations migrate to government-held areas. The UN could channel aid through government areas and local organizations instead of reinforcing the Houthi monopoly. That it does not do so reveals an institutional preference for engaging with the established authorities — even when they steal aid, threaten staff, and weaponize suffering.

The evidence is wide ranging and includes the diversion of assistance to reach Hezbollah in Lebanon, the resale of food aid, and the disappearance of medical supplies. This is organized profiteering, not mismanagement. The Houthis prefer civilian suffering to aid they cannot control or monetize. Starvation serves their political interests when the alternative is aid delivery that bypasses their authority. International agencies know this and continue anyway, treating access as an end in itself rather than asking whether it serves the people or the militia controlling them.

From gatekeeping to hostage-taking

Since May 2024, the Houthis have detained over 60 humanitarian workers, including 13 UN staff and at least 50 employees of international and Yemeni civil society organizations, on fabricated espionage charges. In January 2025, eight more UN workers were arrested, one of whom died in Houthi custody, prompting the UN to suspend operations in Saada governorate. Rather than resulting in consequences, these detentions revealed the Houthis' ability to escalate without cost.

The Houthis have learned that a crisis creates opportunities for consolidation. Following the Israeli strikes that killed Houthi cabinet members in late August, the group weaponized the moment to intensify repression. Houthi security forces raided UN agency buildings and arrested at least 11 more workers as alleged spies. The accusations are baseless, but Houthi officials now say those detained will stand trial. The crackdown extended far beyond aid workers, with the Houthis conducting mass arrests across northern Yemen, enforcing informant hotlines for people to report on spies, and even detaining their own Political Council secretary on espionage charges.

What is even more alarming, however, is that the group’s leadership continues to make the threat explicit. On October 16, 2025, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi announced the death of Chief of Staff Mohammed al-Ghamari and accused UN staff from “the World Food Programme and UNICEF” of operating espionage cells that “played a role in … targeting” his militia. “There is nothing that protects affiliates of humanitarian organizations from accountability and prosecution. What those organizations did is outside their humanitarian role; rather, their role is an aggressive, criminal role,” he added. It is becoming clear that the Houthis can detain, threaten, and extort international organizations because they will ultimately acquiesce to avoid losing access to those in need of assistance.

Engagement without accountability

Saudi Arabia's pursuit of détente with the Houthis in 2023-24 demonstrates precisely why engagement without accountability fails. Despite negotiations and economic concessions, the Houthis escalated, launching unprecedented Red Sea attacks and, according to a private source, threatening to ramp up military action against the Saudis if they did not exert pressure on Yemen’s government to lift economic restrictions imposed by the Central Bank under its control. Each concession strengthened rather than moderated Houthi behavior. The pattern is consistent: Engagement is interpreted as weakness and is used to consolidate control and extract further concessions.

The Houthis bank on institutional inertia. In late October 2025, their chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdulsalam, who is under US sanctions, announced that resolving the detention of UN personnel would require progress on the Saudi-UN peace roadmap, linking two entirely separate issues. The formulation was deliberate, turning aid workers into leverage in unrelated negotiations. The UN, predictably, is content to talk about talking. By accepting this framing as the basis for discussion, the international organization signals that detaining humanitarian workers and manufacturing espionage charges results not in isolation, but rather in a seat at the table.

Yemenis understand what comes next. They watched international engagement legitimize Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, diplomatic normalization that empowered militias while entire populations were left to live under their rule. The same pattern has been playing out with the Houthis for years. But when the talking ends and the international community moves on, it will be Yemenis who remain, living under a militia the world helped entrench.

Fatima Abo Alasrar is an affiliate at the Middle East Institute and a senior policy analyst at the Washington Center for Yemeni Studies.

Photo by MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images