LONDON (Dispatches) -- The investigative website Declassified UK has revealed that the former UN Envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is connected with the British intelligence agency MI6 through the private conflict resolution company, Inter Mediate.
According to the report, Griffiths is both a co-founder and an adviser to the firm which also has ties to the Foreign Office and is known to have among its trustees and advisers a range of former British military and diplomatic figures.
The company “focuses on the most difficult, complex and dangerous conflicts where other organizations are unable to operate” and “brings together some of the leading experts on dialogue and negotiation.”
The Foreign Office informed Declassified that it has “provided just over £4 million to Inter Mediate between 2011-2020 to support work towards resolving international conflicts.”
Griffiths, 71, currently the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, served as the UN special envoy to Yemen until August last year, having been promoted to the position in 2018 amid the ongoing war on Yemen, which Britain is indirectly involved in through its support of the Saudi-led coalition.
Inter Mediate, according to its chief executive, launched “starting work” in Yemen and Syria six years before Griffiths became UN envoy to Yemen. At the time, the British diplomat was serving as a senior UN adviser on Syria.
The findings, the website claims, raise questions about the supposed impartiality of the UN special envoy’s role in the war-torn country. Additionally, Declassified has found that in 2019, the Ministry of Defense seconded a military officer to work with Griffiths in Sanaa while British special forces were active in the Yemen war.
The bloodshed has seen Yemen engulfed by a humanitarian disaster, only paralleled by that currently taking place in Afghanistan. UNICEF has reported that over half of Yemenis are suffering acute hunger.
Meanwhile, the UN has estimated that there were 377,000 war related deaths by the end of 2021. Roughly 60% of the death toll can be attributed to the humanitarian crisis and the majority of deaths are among children below the age of five, with one dying every nine minutes.
The U.S. and the UK are estimated to have sold more than 70 billion pounds of arms and weapons to Saudi Arabia for its war on Yemen.
According to research from Campaign