"Saudi Arabia and its Sunni-majority Persian Gulf allies don't hold a single seat on the U.N. Security Council. But you'd hardly know it: Over the past year, they have wielded their diplomatic clout like a major power, shaping the 15-nation council's diplomatic strategy for Yemen and effectively suppressing U.N. scrutiny of excesses in their 13-month air war against the country's Shiite rebels.
The United States and Britain, two of the U.N. Security Council's five veto-wielding powers, have largely delegated Yemen crisis management to the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council...
Saudi Arabia also has successfully blocked efforts at the U.N. to scrutinize excesses in the course of the conflict. Last September, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates effectively killed an effort by the Netherlands to establish a U.N. Human Rights Council investigation into violations of international humanitarian law by both sides in the Yemen conflict. The initiative initially drew support from Britain's envoy in Geneva. But the United States and U.K. later urged Amsterdam to pursue an agreement that Hadi and his Gulf state backers could support. In order to secure such an agreement, the inquiry was finally dropped...
Some of the most intense diplomatic pressure surrounding the war in Yemen has been applied on U.N. investigators to overlook alleged war crimes by members of the Saudi-led coalition..."