Critics slam US plans to set up body recording Yemen rights abuses

Human rights experts and activists have slammed reports that the US is planning to create a committee to look at abuses committed during the war in Yemen, with one human rights defender calling the idea "very, very bad".

The Biden administration is looking at creating an international committee to document and report on human rights violations in Yemen, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

The body could fill a void left when the Group of Eminent Experts (GEE), the body of UN-appointed experts that had been investigating human rights abuses conducted during the Yemen war, was shut down last year after Saudi Arabia campaigning.

Riyadh successfully lobbied UN Human Rights Council members to vote for its closure.

However, the US has failed to fully investigate its own role in human rights abuses in Yemen, a congressional watchdog found last month, including its sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, which leads the coalition backing Yemeni government forces.

Both the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and the Houthi rebels - supported by Iran - have been accused of committing serious human rights abuses in a years-long war that has directly or indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Yemeni human rights defender Abdulrasheed al-Faqih told The Guardian that he had discussed the US plan for a new body with State Department officials.

He said the US was considering including representatives from Yemen’s Saudi-backed presidential leadership council as a "partner" in the new international mechanism.

"They are working on a very, very bad mechanism that can replace the [UN body],” he said. "First of all, the starting point is that the mandate is weak, and second, it is not independent at all."

Faqih said if the administration pursues the proposal it would be akin to asking Vladimir Putin to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

A senior official for a Geneva-based human rights group said Faqih's concerns about the US approach "seem legitimate".

A spokesperson for the US State Department said it had been "deeply disappointed" by the "termination" of the GEE.

Yemeni government forces and the Houthis signed a truce in April and renewed it in June, bringing some temporary respite to the country.

Biden will visit Saudi Arabia this week as part of a trip to the Middle East.

The US president has softened his position on the Gulf kingdom he once vowed to make a "pariah" state following the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.