A small ray of optimism may be opening for Yemen’s devastated people partly because of new consultations sponsored by the United Nations in Geneva.

Reporting on his discussions with a large spectrum of leaders and people in Yemen over the last seven months, UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths said today, “We have all agreed that time has come to begin a new process, to relaunch the process which will lead to a resolution of this conflict.”

This is an encouraging assessment because it might mean that some of the warring groups and civil society actors are approaching enough war fatigue to finally thrash out their differences at negotiating tables.

The consultations follow a two-year hiatus in a series started in Geneva and Biel (a Swiss city) and followed up in Kuwait. “This is an opportunity this week, for that page to be turned and that corner to be turned,” Griffiths said.

Griffiths has invited the two main protagonists, which are the government of Yemen and the Houthi Ansarullah movement. Unusually, he has also invited a “technical advisory group” of Yemeni women chosen because of their professional merits and technical expertise.

But these are early days and “We are still in the process of trying to understand how the leadership and others in the two parties want to engage with each other, on what issues, in what sequence, in what place,” Griffiths said.

Yemen has huge strategic importance especially for Europe because of the vital trade that goes through the Red Sea. So, its stability is not a local matter but a strategically vital necessity.

The consultations’ urgency is underlined by a UN finding last month that 8.4 million Yemenis are suffering from acute hunger and 7 million are malnourished. Another 10 million civilians will fall into pre-famine conditions by the end of this year while nearly 60 per cent of the people don’t have access to health care or safe water.

Some 50,000 children are thought to have died in 2017 alone, many from a cholera epidemic that struck at least one million people.

The fighting has killed at least 10,000 Yemenis and wounded more than 40,000, as estimated by UN and other humanitarian entities. Almost the entire population is suffering from shortages of food and medicines and over 3 million people have fled their homes.

The purpose of the consultations is to advance towards a UN Security Council resolution that requires an end to the war and the disarmament and withdrawal of forces, crowned by an inclusive political settlement.

They will focus on two main aspects: firstly, to reactivate the peace process and lay the groundwork for formal negotiations later, and second, to establish confidence building measures to create enough trust for the parties to address and resolve issues through “compromise, concession and principle”.

The Ansarullah Houthis are a Zaidi sect, which is an offshoot of Shia Islam but is still disdained by the Shia religious establishment of Iran and Iraq as being not-quite Shia.

Tehran is reported to be their main financial and military backer since they took up arms against the internationally recognized government of Yemen, which is militantly Sunni and backed by Saudi Arabia and the US with weapons and money.

Houthi militias took full control of Yemen’s capital Sana’a in 2014-2015 with the help of a part of the Yemeni army loyal to the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been ousted earlier by Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi with Saudi help.

After the Houthi takeover, Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia which began an air war against the Houthis in alliance with the Emirates. The US is the main supplier of weapons, aerial intelligence and logistics for the air attacks, which the UN and others say have devastated Yemen and its people in addition to lesser destruction caused by the Houthis.

A UN human rights report earlier this month said that the Saudi-led coalition has committed actions that may amount to war crimes, including the killing of thousands of civilians in airstrikes, torture of detainees, rape of civilians and use of child soldiers as young as 8.

It estimated that coalition air attacks caused almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths, while the Houthis have been accused of causing mass civilian casualties due to their siege of Yemen’s third-largest city.