UK Must End its Support for Saudi Arabia’s War on Yemen
Earlier this week, British columnist, journalist Owen Jones, published an article in the Guardian criticising the British role in the Yemen war, and its ongoing military and logistical support that is being used to kill civilians in Yemen.
The Yemeni war has been going on for nearly eight years, specifically since 2014, however it became fierce with the military intervention of the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Thanks to the huge arms sales provided by a number of Western countries led by the UK to the Arab Coalition, Yemen has become the poorest country in the world that is suffering from the “worst humanitarian catastrophe”.
Despite the tragic reality suffered by Yemenis and the heavy deprivation of nutrition, treatment, and education, as well as the displacement of millions who have lost their homes under bombings, the UK government continues to export weapons to the Saudi regime, which uses them in air attacks against residential and vital civilian areas.
The British government has ignored various calls and pleas to stop cooperating with the Saudi regime, cut military supplies and suspend arms trade until it stops all kinds of human rights violations!
Furthermore, the Secretary of Commerce Liz Truss justified the resumption of arms sales to Saudi Arabia in July 2020 – after being suspended – those violations of international law committed by Saudi-led forces were not systematic but rather “individual cases “.
In the latest statistics of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1,200 families were displaced due to the war in Yemen, during the first two weeks of this year 2022, bringing the total number of displaced people across Yemen to 4.2 million people, since the start of the war in March 2015,” noting that “there are enormous humanitarian needs, while funding is very limited.”
Yemenis are on the verge of death due to basic nutritional deficiency, and according to the United Nations World Food Program, about 20 million people in Yemen need urgent humanitarian assistance, warning that Yemeni families are currently facing unprecedented levels of hunger, where three-quarters of Yemen’s children suffer from malnutrition.
Yemeni economy’s failure has affected the living standards, forcing many children to leave education and work in order to provide money for the family, in addition to the fact that most of the schools in Yemen have been destroyed, and many teachers are currently working without receiving salaries.
The collapse of the infrastructure also affected the health system in Yemen, especially with the destruction of hospitals, the spread of epidemics, making the Corona virus not the most dangerous there.
None of the parties to the conflict has refrained from continuing the war and killing civilians, especially with the availability of military support to complete the fighting, which makes the UK is directly involved in all crimes committed against civilians in Yemen, especially as it does not pressure the Saudi regime to stop fighting in return for supplying it with weapons.
Oddly enough, the UK has cut its humanitarian aid to Yemen by half in 2021, at a time when the World Food Program warned that it could not provide the necessary food to Yemenis due to a lack of funding.
We call on the UK government to stop arming the Saudi regime with weapons what they kill Yemenis with which makes the UK a perpetrator in the crimes committed against civilians in Yemen.