Since the start of the conflict in Yemen, the residents of Aden, the largest city in southern Yemen and the provisional capital of the Yemeni government since 2015, have experienced frequent and increasingly common restrictions on, and shutoffs of, water and electricity. These shutoffs negatively affect residents’ rights to health, education, and other rights essential for adequate standard of living, including adequate housing, safe and sufficient water, and adequate sanitation.
“Yemen’s government and the Southern Transitional Council have an obligation to provide access to adequate water and electricity in Aden,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “And yet, when residents have protested the cuts, security forces have responded by firing on them.”
In the nine years since the conflict began, the availability and accessibility of safe water and sufficient electricity has worsened in the city. “Since 2015, we have been suffering and it’s only getting worse,” one Aden resident told Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch spoke with 26 people, some of them internally displaced, living in a small village near the city center, and with the government, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations, about access to water and electricity and government support. Human Rights Watch also interviewed people in various neighborhoods and collected evidence of water and electricity shortages in various areas of the city.
Several people interviewed said that before the war began in 2014, Aden residents had a comprehensive, regular, and affordable supply of electricity and water. Now, many residents only get water from the public network once every two or three days, or not at all.
In July and August 2023, the government-run electricity producer was only able to provide power for about four to six hours a day for many city residents. Still, this was an improvement from June, when publicly supplied electricity was only available for about two or three hours a day, leaving many households without adequate air conditioning in sweltering heat. Summer temperatures in Aden average between 27 and 36 degrees Celsius (81 and 96 degrees Fahrenheit) and regularly soar above 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), in addition to 65 percent average humidity. The situation regularly produces a heat index dangerous to human health especially for children, the elderly, and those with chronic diseases.
While the country remains in conflict, Aden has been relatively stable and the violence in the governorates near the conflict’s front lines largely has not affected the city. The Houthis, who control much of the country, entered the city in the spring of 2015, but were pushed out after a few months of fighting against Yemeni government and Saudi and UAE-led coalition forces. Later, in 2019, the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council – which was loosely allied with the Yemeni government in Aden – took over the governorate.
Since that time, there have been brief outbreaks of violence between various coalition forces and other armed groups in the city, but no airstrikes or larger ground attacks since 2015, and the STC has maintained control over the governorate.
The STC and the Yemeni government are part of a government coalition in Aden, where STC members comprise part of the eight-member presidential leadership council that replaced former President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi in 2022. Both the STC and the Yemeni government, as governing authorities in Aden, are obligated to protect and fulfill Aden residents’ right to water and electricity. In August, the Yemeni government’s House of Representatives published a report finding that “the Electricity Ministry has suffered from widespread corruption.”
One resident, who lives within the city center and has relatively greater access to public services than many other residents in the city “During the war, they cut the water, but the situation today is something different: it’s unbelievable. Water doesn’t come every day. We get it every two days. There are five people in our small family. The water that comes is barely enough to last those two days.”
Internally displaced people have even less water access. A camp manager for one of the largest camps for internally displaced people in the city said that the camp relies on nongovernmental groups for water, and that camp managers continuously reach out to various humanitarian organizations and NGOs to bring water to the camp to meet residents’ water needs.
Access to electricity in Aden has also been a significant problem since the war started. Before the war, residents always had electricity except sometimes for an hour or two a day in the summer. But residents said the situation has become much worse, especially in the last two years. Some people said electricity is only available for about four to six hours a day: either one hour every six hours or two hours every eight hours.
The lack of regular access to electricity has a negative impact on education. A teacher living in Aden said that during sweltering conditions, the lack of electricity to run fans or air conditioning made it “hard for students to process information. The psychological impact [on students] is very real. Electricity is a basic need for education, as is lunch.”
Several people working in health services in the al-Tuwahi district of Aden said that the only way that they have been able to continue operating is by using funding from nongovernmental groups to buy fuel for private diesel generators, as well as the donation of solar panels from these groups. A doctor recalled rushing to save a premature baby in an incubator when the neonatal unit where she works lost electricity.
Several protests erupted in Aden during the summer, with residents demanding greater availability of electricity. Sana’a Center, a Yemeni research organization, said that “the [STC] police have used force to crack down on protesters and discourage further demonstrations.” Human Rights Watch verified video footage that showed the security forces shooting at protestors.
“The Yemeni government and the STC are failing people across Aden,” Jafarnia said. “Their mismanagement has led to families not having drinking water, students struggling to learn in schools without electricity, and public health clinics having to chase nongovernmental groups for funding.”