UN Security Council Votes to Shut Down Hudaydah Mission, Ending Key Yemen Presence

On Jan. 28, in a brief morning session at United Nations headquarters in New York, the Security Council voted to give the United Nations Mission to Support the Hudaydah Agreement in Yemen just two more months to live.

By adopting Resolution 2813 (2026) with 13 votes in favor and two abstentions from China and Russia, the council extended the mission’s mandate to March 31 and ordered its liquidation beginning April 1. The decision will end the UN’s only dedicated political presence in Hudaydah, the Red Sea port city that handles most of Yemen’s imports and humanitarian aid.

The move closes a chapter that began with the 2018 Stockholm Agreement, when diplomats rushed to avert a battle for Hudaydah that aid officials warned could push millions closer to famine. It also underscores how far realities on the ground have shifted — from a localized front line to a conflict spilling out into the Red Sea — and how constrained the UN has become in areas under Houthi control.

Why Hudaydah matters

Hudaydah’s three ports — Hudaydah, Salif and Ras Issa — are the entry point for roughly 70% of Yemen’s commercial imports and about 80% of humanitarian deliveries, according to UN figures. Any disruption can quickly translate into higher food and fuel prices in a country where two-thirds of the population relies on some form of aid.

When the Security Council created UNMHA through Resolution 2452 in January 2019, it gave the mission a narrow but sensitive role: monitor a governorate-wide cease-fire, oversee redeployments of forces away from Hudaydah city and the ports, and chair a Redeployment Coordination Committee bringing together representatives of Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the Houthi movement, also known as Ansar Allah.

The mission was deliberately light. It is a special political mission, not a blue-helmet peacekeeping force, with a small civilian staff and unarmed military observers based primarily in Hudaydah city. For several years, council members renewed it annually by consensus, describing it as a stabilizing presence that helped keep the ports open and provided what diplomats often called the UN’s “eyes and ears” on a crucial coastline.

How the consensus frayed

From late 2023, Houthi forces escalated attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, framing the operations as support for Palestinians during Israel’s war in Gaza. The United States, United Kingdom and partners responded with naval deployments and repeated airstrikes on Houthi targets, including near Hudaydah. The council, meanwhile, demanded an end to attacks on shipping and asked for continued UN reporting on maritime threats.

Inside Yemen, the security environment around Hudaydah grew steadily more hostile for the mission it had once hosted.

Secretary-General António Guterres, in letters to the council, described a sharp rise in cease-fire violations in Hudaydah governorate, with reports of more than 100 violations a day between mid-2024 and mid-2025. UN officials also warned that the mission’s ability to patrol to the ports and verify military redeployments had been sharply restricted by the de facto Houthi authorities.

By late 2025, UN documents were characterizing UNMHA’s operating environment as “largely non-permissive,” citing systematic movement restrictions and a wave of arbitrary detentions of UN and associated personnel in Houthi-controlled areas. The secretary-general publicly condemned the arrests and the seizure of UN premises and assets, saying such actions “hinder the UN’s ability to operate in Yemen and to deliver critical assistance.”

At least 53 UN staff members were being held by Houthi security bodies by October 2025, according to UN officials. Houthi leaders have claimed, without providing evidence, that some of those detained are part of an espionage network linked to Western and Israeli intelligence services. UN spokespeople have rejected those assertions as baseless.

The decision to sunset UNMHA

In July 2025, the Security Council signaled for the first time that the mission might not be permanent. Resolution 2786 extended UNMHA’s mandate only until Jan. 28, 2026 — breaking with the one-year renewals that had become routine — and asked Guterres to review the full range of options, “including assessing the future viability and sunsetting of the Mission.”

Acting U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea was already openly questioning the logic of maintaining UNMHA in its existing form. Developments on the ground had “long surpassed the mission’s limited mandate,” she said, adding: “We believe it is time to end this mission.”

In a review submitted in November 2025, Guterres laid out options including maintaining UNMHA with adjustments, downsizing it, or integrating its core functions into the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen. Diplomats said the review underscored the non-permissive environment and argued that folding Hudaydah-related political work into the envoy’s office could improve efficiency and coherence.

When the council took up the question again in January, the split was clear.

The United Kingdom, which drafted Resolution 2813, presented it as a way to manage “an orderly and sustainable transition” of UNMHA’s responsibilities to the special envoy while protecting UN personnel. British representatives stressed that the council remained committed to the Stockholm and Hudaydah agreements, even if the mission named after them was being wound down. European members echoed that framing, describing UNMHA as a “critical stabilizing presence” whose working environment had become “untenable.”

The United States welcomed the explicit decision to sunset the mission. Houthi “obstructionism has left the Mission without a purpose, and it has to close,” Shea said, arguing that the council must be prepared to adapt or end missions when conditions on the ground are no longer tolerable.

China and Russia, which abstained, voiced concern about terminating the mission while Yemen’s broader conflict remains unresolved. Their representatives questioned whether a short, final extension and an order to liquidate adequately preserved the gains of the Stockholm Agreement, and warned that removing UNMHA could embolden parties on the ground and increase the risk of escalation around the ports.

Reactions from Yemeni and regional actors

Outside the council, Yemeni parties and regional actors have taken starkly different lessons from UNMHA’s seven-year run.

Officials from the internationally recognized Yemeni government say they accepted the Stockholm deal under intense pressure in 2018, halting a campaign to retake Hudaydah. Some now argue the arrangement “stopped the government’s campaign to reclaim Hudaydah from the Houthis” without securing reciprocal withdrawals from the city and ports. After Resolution 2813 passed, Yemen’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the decision to end the mandate by March 31, calling the mission ineffective because of what it described as Houthi intransigence.

At the same time, government representatives continued to meet with UNMHA’s leadership in Riyadh to discuss port operations, de-escalation, road openings and mine action, and to document alleged Houthi violations. They have repeatedly affirmed that they remain committed to the Stockholm and Hudaydah provisions.

The Houthi movement, which has held Hudaydah city and the ports since 2014–2015, benefited from the original agreement, which averted a battle many observers believed it could not win militarily. In practice, however, Houthi authorities have imposed heavy restrictions on the mission’s patrols, allowed the joint redeployment committee to fade and kept military positions in and around the ports.

Their security bodies’ detention of dozens of UN personnel, and the seizure of UN offices, became a central factor in arguments by some council members that UNMHA could no longer safely or credibly perform its mandate.

Saudi Arabia and Gulf partners, which back the Yemeni government but have sought to de-escalate with the Houthis since 2022, have supported a continued UN role in Hudaydah. Saudi officials have hosted repeated visits by UNMHA leaders and the UN special envoy, emphasizing the need to keep ports operating smoothly for humanitarian and economic reasons while wider peace talks continue.

What comes next

With UNMHA’s departure now set, attention is shifting to what will replace it — and what will not.

The Office of the Special Envoy is expected to assume some of the mission’s liaison and political monitoring functions, but it does not have a standing field presence in Hudaydah. Sanctions panels and humanitarian agencies will still gather information, though many face the same pressures that hobbled UNMHA. There will no longer be a dedicated, on-the-ground UN body mandated to monitor cease-fire arrangements and “military manifestations” around the ports.

For Yemeni civilians, the most immediate concern is whether the absence of a visible UN flag in Hudaydah makes renewed fighting, airstrikes or new restrictions on port traffic more likely — and how quickly any such shift would show up in markets and hospitals far from the coast.

For the UN, the mission’s closure raises broader questions: how to calibrate and sunset political missions when host authorities block access; how to protect staff without rewarding harassment and detentions; and how to maintain oversight of strategic infrastructure that sits at the intersection of a domestic war and global trade routes.

In Hudaydah, the mission compound will soon be dismantled and its personnel withdrawn. The cease-fire lines it was sent to monitor, and the ports it was meant to help demilitarize, will remain — but for the first time since early 2019, they will do so without a UN team permanently on the ground watching.