The American Center for Justice (ACJ) unequivocally condemns the ongoing sniper attacks targeting civilians in the city of Taiz. The latest victim, 14-year-old Ibrahim Jalal Amin, was fatally shot by a Houthi-affiliated sniper positioned in the Al-Mawshaki area while returning home from school on April 5. This incident reflects a recurring pattern of conduct that deliberately targets individuals least able to protect themselves or respond to hostile fire.

The deployment of precision sniper weapons equipped with advanced optics provides the perpetrator with clear visual identification of the victim, thereby eliminating any plausible claim of accidental or indiscriminate harm. The targeting of children and women in densely populated civilian areas constitutes a deliberate and calculated military practice aimed at crippling community life and engineering demographic displacement. By turning school routes and water collection points into zones of lethal risk, these actions impose gradual forced displacement, effectively transforming residential neighborhoods into depopulated buffer zones that facilitate military domination.

Within this framework, the systematic targeting of economically and socially vulnerable populations represents a deliberate strategy to consolidate front lines at minimal operational cost. By focusing on families compelled by necessity to remain in high-risk areas and unable to afford displacement, perpetrators achieve localized deterrence while avoiding retaliatory dynamics that might arise from targeting members of armed groups or influential tribal networks. Consequently, these vulnerable populations are left exposed to sustained sniper threats, their daily existence reduced to a continuous mechanism of coercion, and their communities transformed into environments governed by entrenched fear.

These field-based violations are compounded by a media discourse that deliberately obscures accountability by promoting misleading narratives about the political beneficiaries of condemning such crimes. This tactic seeks to detach the criminal act from its material reality, disregarding the fact that the gunfire originates from positions under the group’s control following deliberate identification of the victim. By shifting the discourse from the physical crime scene to speculative political interpretation, this narrative performs a dual function: concealing the direct perpetrator and fostering a climate of legal paralysis that enables ongoing violations and facilitates impunity.

In light of these grave and ongoing abuses, the American Center for Justice stresses that routine international condemnations have failed to deter this pattern of violence and have contributed to the instrumentalization of vulnerable civilians as bargaining tools. ACJ therefore calls on the international community and the UN Special Envoy to adopt concrete and enforceable measures to halt this human attrition. These include lifting the siege on Taiz, ensuring the withdrawal of military positions overlooking civilian neighborhoods, and activating international accountability mechanisms through rigorous criminal documentation that links each violation to its direct perpetrator as well as the chain of command responsible for authorizing and sustaining such acts. These steps are essential to breaking the cycle of impunity and ensuring effective protection for civilian lives.

On the International Day for Mine Awareness, observed today, Saturday, April 4, the American Center for Justice (ACJ) affirms that landmine networks in Yemen constitute a parallel infrastructure of violence, continuing to claim lives and destroy livelihoods independently of the immediate military context that produced them.

The Center recalls its human rights report, “Mines.. Blind Killer,” which documented the systematic and indiscriminate planting of lethal devices across Yemeni territory. It notes that estimates based on field monitoring indicate more than fifteen thousand civilian victims, nearly 80 percent of whom suffer permanent disabilities and lifelong physical deformities as a result of the deliberate use of fragmentation devices and camouflaged explosives specifically designed to mimic the natural environment.

The Center further affirms that the Houthi militia bears full and exclusive responsibility for the planting of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines, as well as improvised and disguised explosive devices, in the current conflict. It emphasizes that the group’s failure, as a de facto actor, to accede to international treaties does not absolve it of criminal responsibility. Customary international humanitarian law imposes binding obligations prohibiting the use of indiscriminate weapons and the targeting of civilians, and places responsible leadership under potential prosecution under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The Center underscores that landmines bear no legitimate relation to the principle of military necessity; rather, they operate as inherently indiscriminate and automated means of harm that kill civilians arbitrarily, without any threat posed by the victims. The brutality of this practice was starkly evident during the truce in mid-2022, when the cessation of hostilities prompted thousands of displaced persons to return to their villages and farms, only to encounter minefields laid by the Houthi militia prior to withdrawal. This resulted in severe human and material losses that undermined prospects for restoring normal life.

The Center also draws attention to an additional catastrophe resulting from the continued closure of main roads, particularly the Sana’a–Marib route, which forces travelers to take an alternative desert route through Al-Jawf Governorate. The danger along this compulsory route is exacerbated by climate change and flooding, which displace landmines and conceal them beneath shifting sand dunes, creating mobile and unpredictable death traps that expand the scope of the threat.

Recommendations:

The American Center for Justice also expresses its deep appreciation for the exceptional efforts undertaken by the Saudi “Masam” Project to clear Yemeni land of landmines, and commends the significant sacrifices made by its field teams in dismantling this deadly infrastructure, protecting civilian lives, and restoring safety.

The American Center for Justice calls on all relevant parties to fulfill their obligations through the following measures:

The international community and sponsors of peace processes: Require the handover of minefield maps as a preliminary condition prior to any political or security negotiations, and reject the marginalization of this crime in peace discussions.

The Houthi militia: Immediately cease the planting of all types of landmines, provide accurate maps of contaminated areas, and assume full criminal and material responsibility for ongoing violations against civilians.

The Yemeni government: Intensify efforts to provide sustainable medical and psychological care to victims, and integrate amputees into structured, long-term rehabilitation programs that go beyond temporary response measures.

International human rights organizations: Develop international litigation cases based on the principle of universal jurisdiction to hold accountable the military and political leaders involved in orchestrating this systematic mine-laying campaign.

American Center for Justice (ACJ)
April 4, 2026