00:00The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Thursday that the head of Yemen's southern separatist, Idaris al-Zubaidi, left for Somaliland by boat and then boarded an aircraft to Mogadishu.
00:11The aircraft, it says, was under the supervision of military officers from the United Arab Emirates, which supports Zubaidi's Southern Transitional Council.
00:19Zubaidi had been due to go to Riyadh on Wednesday for peace talks aimed at bringing to an end violence between the STC and other constituent groups in the anti-Houthi Yemen Presidential Council, but he fled.
00:32The STC had seized two governments last month in the south that were held by Saudi-backed forces, prompting bombings by the Saudi Air Force and opening a deep rift between Riyadh and the United Arab Emirates.
00:44And for more on the situation in Yemen, I am now joined by Ghazali Babakir, who is the head of mission for the NGO Mehad.
00:51Thank you very much for joining us, Ghazali.
00:54The latest news suggests that Idaris al-Zubaidi has fled Yemen and is in Somalia.
01:00Can you tell us any more about that?
01:04Thank you very much for this interview.
01:09And I'm happy to share that our organization is a medical, French and international medical humanitarian organization.
01:20We are working mainly in the humanitarian field and we hear what we what already you have mentioned.
01:28So we don't deal with politics, so I don't have enough information about the political situation in regards to if the event of Idaris leaving Aden or not.
01:42I don't have that information.
01:44But we that's what we listen and we see in the news.
01:46Now, the Yemen Presidential Council is made up of eight groups, but it's increasingly fractured.
01:54So we have the Houthis in the north, but even in the south, there is division there.
02:00How difficult is it to operate in a country like that?
02:05At the moment, according to our area of operation, we are working more on the south.
02:10So I can tell you what we are doing in the south and how we read the situation.
02:14So the situation is very challenging for us at this moment.
02:19So even for us, like internally in offices, we ask our staff to work from home.
02:25Everyone is suspicious about the situation.
02:30We do believe that in this situation, which, as you mentioned, it is a bit of a chaos.
02:36We are worried about the lack of stability and the lack of security in the country.
02:44But at this moment specifically, it's in Aden city, it's normal.
02:50People are doing their activity outside in the street, but it's with worryness and it's with also very carefulness.
03:02And from our side, for example, we work in another governorate, not in Aden, in Abiyan governorate.
03:08And that usually is difficult at the moment to move and to access the population.
03:14We are also worried about the situation in other areas like in Hadramaut, in Mahra and in Adala,
03:21where also it's becoming very difficult to access population in this chaotic and unstable and unclearness about the future.
03:31So we are waiting for the coming few days to see the involvement of the situation.
03:37And we will try to adjust and try to find our room of operation.
03:42But definitely, as you described, it is very challenging.
03:45Now, Mehad is a medical NGO.
03:49Yemen has suffered terribly from more than a decade of war, and this is clearly not helping things.
03:55On a practical level, what are the greatest challenges that your NGO faces?
04:01We have mainly access to our population.
04:04So movement of our team, because we don't have a fixed team in the area of our operation, so we cannot access there.
04:11In addition, also we see in our activity, because we are supporting Lauder Hospital.
04:17It's a district in the governorate of Abiyan, one of the most challenging governorates in Yemen.
04:24We are facing some trouble or issues with the hospital itself.
04:30And that's also related to the decreased international fund to Yemen, especially in this situation.
04:37So we do believe that in the coming period, Yemen and the humanitarian field or sector will need a bit of support from the international community.
04:47Now, we have become accustomed in recent years to the civil war in Sudan, rather.
04:56A lot of people have felt that it has been forgotten in the shadow of other wars elsewhere.
05:01Do you think this is also the case for Yemen?
05:03Indeed, indeed, it is.
05:08We do see, like, if you look at the fund that is coming to Yemen in 2024 and 2025, you can see definitely the difference.
05:20There is a rapid decrease and short of funding, which resulted, for example, in our area of operation, we cover a population of 150,000.
05:33After the cut, that's from 2024.
05:35In 2025, the number of patients or the catchment area for our population increased to over half a million population.
05:45And that's due to the closure of some of the health facilities in the region and in the area.
05:50And definitely that also led all the patients to come to our facility.
05:56And that's why we are seeing an increased number of patients in this facility that we are supporting.
06:02But this is an example, and I'm quite sure this is happening, talking to other NGOs and humanitarian actors and also authorities.
06:10This is happening all around, and that's, as you describe it, again, it's also part of the forgetness of the situation in Yemen also.
06:23Thank you very much for that, Ghazali Babakir, the Chief of Mission of the NGO Mehad in Yemen.
06:29Thank you very much for that, Ghazali Babakir, the Chief of Mission of the NGO Mehad in Yemen.
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