UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The U.N.’s special envoy to Yemen has stepped down after four years of efforts at a peaceful political transition in the Arab world’s poorest country fell apart amid a Shiite rebel uprising and Saudi-led airstrikes.
A U.N. statement late Wednesday said Jamal Benomar “has expressed an interest in moving on to another assignment” and that his successor will be named “in due course.” Benomar’s departure creates a diplomatic vacuum in Yemen, where he had been the key international figure working to bring the feuding parties together, even after diplomats fled embassies and the U.N. staff pulled out.
Benomar, who previously served as an envoy in Iraq and Afghanistan, had come under criticism from some in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, as his recent efforts to broker peace showed little success.
Yemen is now under weeks of airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition in an attempt to push back Shiite Houthi rebels who swept south and caused the Western-backed president to flee.
The U.N. said in its statement that it will “spare no efforts to re-launch the peace process,” but the challenge has grown as the fighting in Yemen has become a kind of proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies and Iran, a Shiite power that has supported the Houthis. More than 700 people have been killed since the airstrikes began.