A/HRC/42/CRP.1 Houthis deliberately stopped water from reaching the governorate 736. One witness who was displaced with his entire family described spending days without food reaching their village: “We could not get a single drop of water”, he further told the Group of Experts.737 According to witnesses and sources interviewed by the Group738, the siege’s intensification after January 2019 had a major impact on the civilian population’s access to food and water and some displaced persons told the Group of Experts that their displacement was due to the hostilities as well as the lack of access to basic goods, including medicine and medical services. 461. Families displaced from various parts of Hajour described the heavy shelling of civilian areas, explosions and targeting of civilian houses within villages, and the impact of the “siege” on their access to medical care, food and water. People were reportedly stopped at Houthi-manned checkpoints and some “disappeared”, while trying to leave the area. One witness739 who was displaced with his entire family described how he and his family walked at night to avoid checkpoints until they passed Houthi controlled areas and reached a part where they were able to request passing cars to drive them to safety. They walked for three days. “We were lucky to find good people to pick us up”, he said. The man told the Group of Experts that he and his family reached a safe area on 10 March, 25 days after their journey from Kushar began. Denial of humanitarian access and obstructions to humanitarian assistance 462. According to UNHCR, Hajjah hosts “by far” the highest number of internally displaced person sites and internally displaced persons in Yemen, 300,000 as of 28 June 2019.740 Up to 68,000 families are estimated to have been displaced within or from Hajjah between February and the end of March 2019. OCHA estimated that between midFebruary and mid-March 2019, 8,400 families were displaced from Kushar district alone as a result of armed clashes between the Hajour tribesmen and the Houthis741. 463. OCHA reported on assistance provided by the United Nations to the displaced from the area, and observed that more than a million people were not accessing food and that thousands of cholera cases had been reported across the governorate of Hajjah. The United Nations reiterated its request for access to the area742. 464. Sources, including NGOs743 operating in Hajjah Governorate, including one of the districts where a number of displaced persons have sought safety, told the Group of Experts it was very difficult to ascertain the exact number of internally displaced within the area. The primary reason for this was that access to Hajour had been largely denied by the Houthis to humanitarian agencies since the conflict erupted. One source cited the scarce presence of international humanitarian agencies in Hajjah, despite the immense needs in the Governorate, as one of the reasons why an adequate response to the crisis was not possible in a timely manner.744 They described a pattern of Houthis pressuring NGOs and pushing them out of their sub-offices at district level and into the main city of Hajjah, and of controlling access to the field, including by moving humanitarian actors further away from those they are trying to reach in locations hosting IDPs. Access to locations of active 736 Confidential Sources on File. Confidential Sources on File. 738 Confidential Sources on File. 739 Confidential Sources on File. 740 UNHCR, Operational Update, 28 June 2019, available at https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-unhcr-operational-update-28-june-2019 741 OCHA, Yemen Humanitarian Update, 22 March- 17 April 2019, available at https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-humanitarian-update-covering-22-march-17-april-2019issue-6-enar. 742 UN Office of the Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, “Scores of innocent civilians wounded and killed in attacks in Hajjah Governorate”, 11 March 2019, available. at https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/HC_Statement_Hajjah_11_March_2019.pdf 743 Confidential Sources on File. 744 Confidential Sources on File. 737 115