In late August 2023, Hisham al-Hakimi, Save the Children International’s safety and security director in Yemen, informed his colleagues he was in danger of being detained.

In early September, Ansar Allah – the group known as the Houthis that controls most of northern Yemen – arrested him in the capital Sana’a and took him to an undisclosed location. In late October, Save the Children announced that al-Hakimi had died in custody. He was 44 years old. The organisation described his death as “unexplained” and called for an investigation.

More than 16 months later, neither Save the Children nor the Houthis have released official explanations for his detention and death. A spate of further arrests and another aid worker death in custody have only increased the urgency of the questions – and tough choices – facing the sector and others operating in Yemen.

The New Humanitarian has sought to piece together the events leading up to al-Hakimi’s arrest, during his detention, and after his death. What lessons, if any, can be drawn from what happened to this senior Save the Children staffer?

Why the Houthis targeted al-Hakimi remains elusive, and The New Humanitarian has not seen any evidence that anyone other than his captors was responsible for his death. But interviews with current and former Save the Children staff, as well as internal documents, reveal that the organisation’s Yemen operation faced serious internal problems immediately before, during, and after his arrest. Workplace disputes and an underresourced system for reporting staff concerns may have left the country office more vulnerable to interference by a powerful armed group with a history of arbitrary detentions. 

Save the Children’s own investigations found that staff had raised “various concerns” about the Yemen country office for months before and after al-Hakimi’s arrest, but the organisation’s “incident management processes failed” and its “risk management processes were not followed”, according to a three-page summary of the findings seen by The New Humanitarian.

“Overall, it was found that there were fundamental failures of leadership, process, and accountability that we must urgently address,” the summary said.

Since al-Hakimi’s death, the Houthis have escalated their crackdown on local aid and civil society workers. They arrested more than 50 people in June 2024, including 13 UN personnel, then another eight UN workers in January this year. Many of the detainees remain incommunicado. At least three have been released. One UN worker died in custody in early February.

These tragedies have placed the aid sector in a double bind. Some relatives of the detainees and some Yemen experts are calling on aid leaders to enforce tougher red lines against Houthi interference in humanitarian work, including detentions of aid workers. On the other hand, irritating the Houthis could provoke further arrests or the loss of access to communities that need assistance – and that are now bracing for the impacts of US President Donald Trump’s aid cuts.

For this investigation, The New Humanitarian interviewed five Yemen experts, as well as relatives of three currently detained aid workers. All said that aid organisations have accommodated Houthi interference in their work for too long, compromising humanitarian principles and relinquishing the leverage necessary to deter staff arrests.

“The international community, including the UN and INGOs operating in Yemen, is not doing enough to advocate for the release of the detainees,” said Niku Jafarnia, a Human Rights Watch researcher who focuses on abuses in Yemen and Bahrain. 

“Many have continued their operations in Houthi-controlled territories without taking adequate measures to protect non-arrested staff,” she said. “They should place more pressure on the Houthis to release staff who have been detained, and to end other practices, such as aid diversion, that have been ongoing for years.”

Relatives of the three detainees who spoke to The New Humanitarian criticised what they called a tepid public response to the arrests by the UN and INGOs, and said they hoped media coverage would prompt aid organisations to take stronger action on behalf of those being held.