Food for loyalty… how the Houthis turned their territories into a vast prison
For nearly a decade, Yemenis in Houthi-controlled areas have lived under harsh conditions ranging from security crackdowns and economic pressures to the absence of public freedoms.
With a centralized administration loyal to the movement and the systematic sidelining of civil institutions, the areas under their control have become a miniature version of a “militia-run state,” where politics is constrained, the media is monitored, and the economy is geared to fueling the war machine and preserving power.
In interviews conducted by Reuters with hundreds of Yemenis who fled Houthi areas, people described the group as an armed movement that suppresses dissent, pushes the population to the brink of hunger, and exploits international food aid to coerce parents into sending their children to fight.
“The choice is between bad and worse… Either you join them and get a food basket to stave off hunger, or you don’t—an impossible choice,” said Abdelsalam, a 37-year-old farmer now living in a displacement camp after escaping Houthi-controlled territory. Like many interviewed, he gave only his first name because relatives remain under Houthi rule.
These testimonies from civilians and dozens of aid workers, along with a review of internal UN agency documents, show how the Houthis maintain an iron grip: imposing a wide range of taxes on a poor population, manipulating international aid systems, and imprisoning hundreds.
Human rights and relief groups have also faced waves of arrests. In late August, the World Food Programme (WFP) said 15 staffers were detained after Houthi authorities raided its offices in Sanaa, bringing the number of humanitarian workers currently held to 53.
“It’s so difficult we can’t even breathe,” said Abu Hamza, who fled Houthi areas a few years ago. He said he spent a year in an underground prison for publicly criticizing the movement during qat sessions: “We are ruled by militias in the name of religion.”
Donor funding for humanitarian operations in Yemen has declined, partly due to ongoing Houthi diversion of aid. The situation worsened when the main source of funding dried up earlier this year after the Trump administration cut foreign aid, ending many USAID-funded operations.
Since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Israel has carried out devastating strikes against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon—both part of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance.” The Houthis have also been targeted, including in an August strike that the group says killed its appointed prime minister and several ministers, along with dozens of civilians.
According to Yemeni analyst Maysaa Shuja al-Din of the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, the Houthis capitalized on the Gaza war to gain momentum, having “realized they could exploit it” and becoming “enamored of their new regional and international image,” even as “popular anger against them is mounting on the ground, with Yemenis bearing the brunt of Israeli retaliation.”
Leader worship
Researchers say the Houthis govern through a tight circle of loyalists and family members, while their leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, rules by instilling fear. Human rights groups and former detainees interviewed by Reuters say thousands of Yemenis have been arrested, held incommunicado, and tortured by the Houthis.
Dozens of displaced people report intensive ideological mobilization: state employees are said to be forced to attend weekly sessions featuring Abdel-Malik
al-Houthi’s lectures, while his image and slogans loom on giant billboards across Sanaa.
Abdelmalik, a teacher, left Houthi areas in January last year after a Houthi school supervisor suspended him for refusing to attend these sessions. “No salary, life impossible. Worse still, Houthis came weekly to the house to collect donations for ‘Gaza marches’,” said the 40-year-old.
Aid theft
Between 2015 and 2024, the UN raised 28 billion dollars for Yemen’s humanitarian needs. Roughly a third—about 9 billion—went to the WFP to feed up to 12 million people per month, most of them in Houthi-held areas. Other UN agencies, including UNICEF and WHO, injected hundreds of millions into health facilities, fuel, and nutrition programs.
But aid often fails to reach those most in need, as the Houthis control and redirect it to the front lines. For Fawaz, a former accountant, international aid was a lifeline after the economy collapsed; he sold his wife’s gold to feed the family. The 47-year-old father of eight now lives in a displacement camp after fleeing Houthi territory in 2021.
He tried to register for aid in Houthi-controlled Hajja. Local Houthi authorities, he said, gave him two options: if he wanted a food basket, he had to “join their militias, attend weekly marches, and chant ‘Death to America.’” When he refused, a Houthi supervisor labeled him an “enemy” and deemed him “ineligible” for assistance.
According to dozens of displaced people, UN field monitors, and aid workers, the Houthis effectively control the humanitarian supply chain. Beneficiary lists include many “ghost” recipients—nonexistent people—while those who do receive aid are frequently loyalists such as armed fighters. “Of about nine million beneficiaries registered in Houthi areas, five million were unknown to us,” one aid worker told Reuters.
In response, the WFP froze general food distributions in 2023 in Houthi-held areas after failing to agree on reliable targeting measures. The agency says it resumed limited emergency distributions in the most at-risk locations to stave off famine but notes that “all WFP operations in northern governorates are currently halted.”
The Houthis have also sought to control food security data collection that underpins IPC assessments. In 2023, they hand-picked many enumerators and surveyed households, according to three analysts involved—allowing them, Reuters reported, to inflate hunger figures to attract more funding. To limit interference, UN agencies turned to remote phone surveys and external contractors to monitor distributions and report abuses. But Houthi raids shut down several firms and detained staff; twelve employees told Reuters they now fear carrying out their duties.
Adnan al-Harazi, CEO of Prodigy Systems, a key monitoring firm, was seized in January 2023, placed in solitary confinement, and accused of espionage. In June 2024 he was sentenced to death, later commuted to 15 years in prison. The WFP said risks to third-party monitors are “unacceptable.”
The U.S. State Department says the Houthis are holding more than a dozen current and former local employees linked to the U.S. government on “false charges” of espionage.
Donors are divided over whether to keep operating in Houthi-controlled areas. At least a dozen current and former UN staffers told Reuters that the lack of clear red lines has made UN agencies “de facto complicit” in systemic aid theft by the militias. Despite repeated violations, the UN continued operations, enabling large-scale diversion, say three current and former WFP staffers and three outside monitors, adding that food security data has been distorted for years.
The WFP says it “acts immediately when credible evidence of diversion or theft emerges” and has taken steps to improve targeting and beneficiary management, repeatedly halting operations when necessary to ensure aid reaches those in need without interference.
An internal WFP-commissioned study from January 2024 lists abuses reported by Yemenis: “confiscating food to feed fighters,” “withholding rations to pressure people into recruitment,” and forcing recipients to perform “undesired activities to obtain aid, such as chanting Houthi slogans.”
Child recruitment
Tens of thousands have fled Houthi areas to escape hunger, hardship, imprisonment, or the forced recruitment of their children. Human Rights Watch reports systematic child recruitment since at least 2009, with a sharp rise since the Gaza war.
Abd al-Mughni al-Sanani says he was forcibly conscripted at age ten: detention, beatings, indoctrination. In a displacement camp in government-held Marib, he says he received military training and delivered supplies to other child soldiers. Trainers “prepared the children for death,” telling them that “the path to heaven runs through Abdel-Malik al-Houthi.” “They told us there was no need to pray… He lectured us and said that with his seal we would enter paradise,” recalls the now-18-year-old.
Many families who fled report crushing taxes and fees. In Sanaa, Abu Hamza, a former soldier and father of five, opened a small grocery, but levies eroded his income. He fell into debt—five million rials (about 20,000 dollars). He says he repeatedly watched trucks bearing the WFP logo enter and leave a Houthi-run school across from his shop: “In broad daylight they haul the aid.”
Taxes kept rising. As despair set in, Houthi authorities pushed him to join Friday marches and demanded he enlist to fight: “They told me, we want you on the front lines.” By 2020 he was bankrupt, selling off his belongings, including a gold-handled dagger inherited from his father. When money ran out, he would walk far from home so neighbors wouldn’t see him and stand outside a mosque to beg. In 2021 he fled with his family to Marib.
