Anna Stavrianakis - History won’t look kindly on Britain over arms sales feeding war in Yemen
The war in Yemen has killed as
many as 57,000 people since March 2015, left 8.4 million people
surviving on food aid and created a cholera
epidemic. The British government claims to have been at the forefront of
international humanitarian assistance, giving more than £570m to
Yemen in bilateral aid since the war began. Yet the financial value
of aid is a drop in the ocean compared with the value of weapons sold to the
Saudi-led coalition – licences worth at least £4.7bn of
arms exports to Saudi Arabia and £860m to
its coalition partners since the start of the war. Relatively speaking, aid has
been little more than a sticking plaster on the death, injury, destruction,
displacement, famine and disease inflicted on Yemen by an entirely
manmade
disaster.
Britain and the US
have been the key supporters of the Saudi-led coalition, providing arms,
intelligence, logistics, military training and diplomatic cover. This has
provoked criticism: in the US, a Democrat congressional resolution invoked the
1973 War Powers Act to end US involvement in the war in Yemen, but was blocked
by a Republican procedural rule change to a resolution wolves.
More recently, an attempt to push through a UN resolution calling for a
ceasefire was stalled
by the US and other countries, reportedly after a lobbying campaign by
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In the UK,
parliament’s committees on arms export controls (CAEC) fell into disarray in
2016, unable
to agree on whether or not to recommend a suspension of arms exports
to Saudi Arabia pending an international investigation into alleged war crimes. Britain’s own rules
state that it cannot sell weapons to countries where there is a clear risk they
might be used to violate international humanitarian law. The UK government
claims to have one of the most rigorous arms control regimes in the world, yet
evidence of attacks on medical
facilities and schoolchildren in
Yemen is clear.
War is the primary
cause of death, injury, famine and disease in Yemen; and the coalition is
causing twice as many civilian
casualties as all other forces fighting in Yemen – including the
Houthis...
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