Yemen

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Yemeni conflict is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the modern era. In January, the death toll passed 100,000, and last month, more civilians were killed by the war than in any other month so far this year. Ten million Yemenis face acute food shortages, while 7 million require treatment for malnutrition. Twenty-four million civilians, or 80% of the population, are dependent on international aid and assistance, and it is shameful. It is shameful that Britain is complicit in such an atrocity.

The UK supplies weapons and crucial military support to the Saudi-led coalition, which is responsible for the highest number of reported civilian fatalities. The UN has verified the deaths of at least 7,700 civilians since 2015, although some estimates are much higher, and it found that 60% of those were due to bombing raids by the Saudi-led coalition. The UK is estimated to have licensed £5.3 billion-worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015. British officials have also provided military advice, including on bombing, targets and tactics. In contrast, international funding at the 2020 Yemen pledging conference in June fell £1 billion short of the UN’s target. The UK contributed just £160 million, which is £40 million less than in 2019 and amounts to just 3% of the value of UK arms sold to Saudi Arabia. British companies should not be allowed to profit from the suffering of the people of Yemen.

Exports of British arms to Saudi Arabia were halted by a legal challenge in the summer of 2019, yet after a court ruling in July this year, the UK is to resume these sales, despite seemingly clear evidence that they will be used against Yemeni civilians in violation of international humanitarian law. This is criminal. The Ministry of Defence recently revealed that it has logged more than 500 Saudi air raids that are in possible breach of international law in Yemen—an increase of more than 200 in just over two and a half years. That directly contradicts the Government’s recent justification to resume arms sales on the basis that only isolated incidents without any pattern have occurred. In fact, the UK Government’s duplicity is shameful. On the one hand, they sign resolutions and speak of their desire to end the conflict, yet on the other, they continue to facilitate the suffering of the Yemeni people by providing the weapons that rain down on civilian houses.

Last week, the United Nations Secretary-General reported that there were more than 2,000 confirmed cases of covid-19 in Yemen. The country is already suffering from the largest cholera outbreak on record, with more than 2 million cases. A coronavirus outbreak would compound the misery, which the UK has shamefully allowed to fester. The global pandemic should have offered our Government an opportunity to step away from the conflict as well as from other theatres of war, which is causing so much suffering across the globe.

At the start of this pandemic, the UN Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire. It is about time that the Government listen and come here and account for their criminal acts.