Muhammad Jumaih — Yemen’s Ambassador to the United Nations’ Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) — strongly condemned the Houthi’s exploitation of Yemen’s antiquities, selling and smuggling them abroad in order to finance the war operations it is leading against the legitimate government and the defenceless Yemeni people.
During his meeting with Faisal Foulath — the Secretary-General of the Gulf European Commission for Human Rights — at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, he revealed that Houthi militias are exploiting children in the war and turning hundreds of schools in Yemen into military barracks.
For his part, Foulath praised the important diplomatic activity of the legitimate Yemeni government in the world, especially within the UN’s organisations and its mission to UNESCO, and Jumaih’s role in promoting joint programmes with the organisation in order to preserve the antiquities of Yemen and recover artefacts that were smuggled out since the Houthi coup and work to end the Houthi militia’s tampering with antiquities and archaeological sites to finance the war.
Furthermore, Foulath affirmed that international human rights organisations support the Yemeni government’s role in protecting education and schools in Yemen from tampering and material and moral sabotage, and that UNESCO is aware of how the Houthis recruit tens of thousands of students as militants and suicide bombers by continuously brainwashing them with sectarian education and combat training, which according to international law and Geneva human rights laws is a war crime.
