Legal Impediments to the Prosecution of War Crimes in Internationalized Armed Conflicts: The Case of Yemen

The pressure for political transitions brought about by the Arab Spring in 2011 caused the descent of several countries in the region into civil war. Yemen is a prominent example, where internal turmoil turned into hostilities in 2014 and led to the military conquest by a non-state actor of the capital Sana’a. The Yemeni government relocated to the southern city of Aden, and in 2015 a Saudi-led foreign coalition intervened with military means in its support, a military campaign that is still ongoing four years later. In the years since 2015, the Saudi-led coalition has faced multiple allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law. The subject of this thesis is the international law applicable to these atrocities, and legal and extra-legal impediments that exist for holding individuals in the Saudi-led coalition to account for international crimes