The American Center for Justice (ACJ) released an investigative human rights report titled “Tears on Rubble,” documenting the deliberate and widespread bombing of private dwellings across 15 Yemeni governorates from March 2011 to September 2023. Based on a two-year field investigation involving physical site inspections, photographic evidence, and interviews with victims and eyewitnesses, the report substantiates the detonation of 716 homes, framing the practice as a systematic tool of political retribution and terror against civilian dissidents.
The findings assign primary legal responsibility to the Houthi movement for 703 detonations (representing 98.18% of all recorded incidents), while attributing the remainder to individual violations committed by the Popular Resistance in Taiz (7 incidents), ISIS in Al-Bayda (5 incidents), and the Shabwani Elite Forces in Shabwa (1 incident). Al-Bayda Governorate suffered the highest concentration of destruction with 118 demolished homes, followed by Taiz (110), Al-Jawf (76), Saada (73), and Sana’a (57). In 71.64% of documented incidents (513 cases), armed units carried out pillaging of movable assets—including personal vehicles, legal title deeds, identity documents, and jewelry—prior to rigging structures with high-grade explosives such as TNT.
The report underscores grave civilian casualties and compound violations directly tied to these demolitions: 25 individuals—including 11 children and 5 women—were killed under the rubble of their homes, while 24 others sustained critical injuries, all under Houthi operations. The blasts and invasive night raids induced acute trauma across affected communities, causing 27 documented miscarriages among pregnant women and widespread psychological disorders among children. The destruction resulted in the arbitrary displacement of 1,123 families; 89% fled to alternative governorates, with roughly 65% left destitute in makeshift displacement camps across Marib, Taiz, and Al-Dhalea. Furthermore, the loss of civil records buried under rubble deprived at least 239 children of basic schooling.
Under international humanitarian law, particularly the rules governing non-international armed conflicts and the Geneva Conventions’ Additional Protocol II, the arbitrary destruction of civilian objects without imperative military necessity constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Under Yemeni domestic legislation, including Articles 137 and 306 of Penal Law No. 12 of 1994, these acts constitute banditry (Hirabah) and aggravated property sabotage punishable by death. ACJ demands that the Houthi group completely dismantle its practice of residential demolitions and compensate victims, calls on the internationally recognized government to initiate national criminal proceedings against perpetrators, and urges the international community and the UN Security Council to hold violators individually accountable without impunity.
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