The UN has so far failed to take tangible, decisive action to halt the escalating campaign of violence by the Houthis in Yemen and across the wider Red Sea region. This failure constitutes a profound test of the organization’s credibility and its claim to global legitimacy.
When nonstate actors or states initiate sustained campaigns of violence against civilians, commercial shipping and the territory of other nations, the international community looks to the UN as the primary institution charged with arresting such threats. The organization’s foundational purpose, articulated in the UN Charter, is the maintenance of international peace and security.
By largely confining itself to statements of condemnation and the renewal of existing, inadequately enforced measures, the UN risks confirming the perception that it has become a ceremonial body rather than an effective instrument for collective security.
The organization was established in the aftermath of the Second World War precisely for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of unchecked aggression and mass violence. Article 1 of its Charter commits the organization to the maintenance of international peace and security, while Chapter VII empowers the Security Council to determine the existence of threats to peace and to authorize sanctions or the use of force to address them.
Prolonged inaction signals that certain forms of violence can proceed without meaningful consequences
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh
The principle of collective responsibility underpins the system: aggression by one actor against another is not merely a bilateral matter but a challenge to the international order itself. When the Security Council and the broader UN membership fail to respond with proportionate measures, the Charter’s promise is hollowed out.
Prolonged inaction signals that certain forms of violence can proceed without meaningful consequences, eroding confidence in the institution’s capacity to uphold the rules it was created to defend.
The Houthis have crossed several red lines with increasing frequency and degrees of severity. Inside Yemen itself, they have resumed large-scale military operations, captured strategic coastal territory, including the port of Mokha, and advanced toward Bab Al-Mandab Strait, while imposing sieges on cities such as Taiz that place millions of civilians under acute humanitarian pressure.
Cross-border attacks have targeted civilian aviation and energy infrastructure inside Saudi Arabia. Missile and drone strikes on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killed at least a dozen people and wounded more than 300, many of them civilians of several nationalities. Repeated attacks on other airports and Aramco facilities have caused further casualties and disruption.
Concurrently, the group has attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandab, declaring blockades on Saudi-linked vessels, sinking or damaging ships and endangering crews. These actions have disrupted a waterway through which about 12-to-15 percent of global maritime trade passes, resulting in increased insurance costs, lengthy diversions around the Cape of Good Hope, and upward pressure on energy prices.
The cumulative effect is a multidimensional crisis: a deepening humanitarian emergency inside Yemen marked by the renewed displacement of more than 280,000 people since August; an energy and trade crisis with global economic ramifications; and a security crisis that threatens regional stability.
When the UN responds primarily with rhetorical condemnations rather than enforceable measures, the consequences extend beyond the immediate theater; impunity emboldens the perpetrators.
Groups that observe their sustained attacks on civilians, critical infrastructure, and international shipping elicit only presidential statements or the routine renewal of sanctions regimes draw the rational conclusion that they can continue, expand or innovate without any decisive consequences.
Other nonstate armed groups and revisionist actors also take note of this. This demonstration effect is corrosive: the threshold for acceptable violence is lowered, and the expectation of accountability is weakened. Over time, this dynamic multiplies insecurity rather than containing it.
In this particular case, the long-term cost is measured not only in additional Yemeni and Saudi lives but in the progressive degradation of the international norms that reject the deliberate targeting of civilians, and safeguard freedom of navigation in international waterways.
The present situation simultaneously constitutes a humanitarian, energy and security crisis that the UN is institutionally equipped, and legally obligated, to address.
The Security Council retains the primary responsibility for this under the Charter. It can, and should, adopt a Chapter VII resolution that strengthens the existing arms embargo, expands targeted sanctions against the Houthi leadership and its financial networks, and authorizes or endorses more robust enforcement mechanisms.
The Houthis have crossed several red lines with increasing frequency and degrees of severity
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh
Precedents exist in the council’s prior treatment of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, and in successive resolutions relating to Yemen, including Resolution 2216 in 2015 and subsequent renewals of the sanctions regime.
A new resolution could demand the immediate cessation of cross-border attacks and attacks on commercial shipping, require the release of all detained UN personnel and other workers, and mandate enhanced efforts to prevent weapons transfers. Parallel or complementary action could include the authorization of a multinational naval and air coalition tasked with protecting commercial traffic in international waterways, and degrading the capacity of the Houthi to launch further attacks, consistent with the right of self-defense recognized in Article 51, and with prior council practice.
In addition, the international community should seriously examine the applicability of the Responsibility to Protect. Endorsed by the 2005 World Summit, this affirms that sovereignty entails a responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
When a state is unwilling or unable to provide that protection, or when nonstate actors systematically violate those prohibitions, the international community can take collective action through the Security Council. The documented pattern of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the obstruction of humanitarian access, and the deliberate creation of siege conditions and risk of starvation in parts of Yemen bring the situation within the scope of the second and third pillars of Responsibility to Protect.
Continuing inaction will not produce stability; it will prolong the humanitarian catastrophe inside Yemen, sustain elevated risks to global energy markets and trade routes, and encourage further escalation by the Houthis and other actors who conclude that the costs of aggression remain manageable.
The cumulative result is a more violent and less rule-bound international system. It is therefore incumbent upon the Security Council, the secretary-general, and the broader UN membership to move beyond episodic statements of concern. Immediate, coherent action — through strengthened sanctions, enforced arms interdiction, protection of navigation, and a clear political strategy grounded in the Charter and the Responsibility to Protect — is required if the UN is to retain any credible claim to the maintenance of international peace and security.
The UN must intervene decisively to stop the Houthis. Its credibility and legitimacy are now at stake. Continuing inaction will only embolden the group. The alternative is the progressive confirmation that the organization has become largely ceremonial — a development that would itself constitute a lasting injury to the post-1945 order.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist.
X: @Dr_Rafizadeh
