Yemen

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid and important point, but what we need to do is to ensure that everyone engaged in that region co-operates, wherever possible, to ensure that people get the food and other support that they need.

This new generation in Yemen, who are searching for a better future, have been abandoned to a conflict influenced by others, none of whom have the needs of the Yemeni people in mind.

The Minister said in a speech last week that Saudi Arabia should do a “better job” of trumpeting its human rights successes. What an astonishing statement to make. I think we can safely assume that the civilians in Yemen suffering as a result of this terrible onslaught will feel that they have no human rights whatsoever. Human rights, and particularly those of the people of Yemen, evidently did not loom large in that statement—but they must. The UK Government must admit that they have been front and centre of the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, and that yet again we are putting profit before basic human rights and international law.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I agree that the hon. Lady is making a powerful and pertinent speech. However, I ask her to be cautious in quoting from The Independent, which used a Google translator to translate a press release of a statement that did not accurately represent the meeting I had in Saudi Arabia. I did make that point last week in response to the urgent question and I repeat it today—I would never use such language. I made it very clear to the Saudi Arabians that they have a long way to go, and that we wanted to work with them on improving their human rights.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I echo his sentiment that there is a significant way to go in respect of human rights, which is a matter of great concern. I was in the Chamber last week, so I am pleased that I can recall the sentiment, if not the words, that the hon. Gentleman said. I will be interested to look back at the discussion, because I thought the sentiment was quite clear.

The UK Government must fully consider the situation in Yemen. There is no doubt that it is challenging in many ways, but this does not mean that we should disregard either the credible evidence coming from the area or the realities and scale of the problem. A UN panel of experts has documented 119 coalition sorties relating to violations of international law in Yemen—including the targeting of civilians. It is worthy of note that the International Development Committee, while observing that this UN report was leaked, did not consider that this affected the credibility of what it was asserting.

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[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am glad to be able to participate in this debate on the situation in Yemen, which is clearly not getting the international attention that it should. I commend to Members the coverage that Scotland’s newest newspaper, The National, has given the conflict over the past few months. The newspaper has consistently endeavoured for some time to get the matter into the consciousness of the Scottish public.

My interest in Yemen was sparked by my constituent Fahim, who came to see me last year on the day the exam results came out in Scotland. He passed the courses that he had been studying, but his pride in doing so was overwhelmed by the devastating news that his application to stay in the UK had been rejected and the Home Office had decided that he had to return to his native Yemen. This adoptive Glaswegian has been in the UK since 2009. He was a pharmacist back home, and since coming to Glasgow he has participated in voluntary groups and tried to make a life in the city. He would love to be able to go back home but, as he explained to me, it would be incredibly dangerous. He has no certainty about what has happened to his family in Yemen, so he could not even return to the people he knew, never mind the place he knew.

Since I spoke to Fahim he has been made destitute by the Home Office, and he has been sleeping in shelters and on sofas. Today the Home Office tried to contact him at an address that it evicted him from in August. I have been fighting for him to be able to stay here, because the more he told me about the situation, the more worried I became. I discovered that UK citizens are advised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that if they find themselves in Yemen, they need to get out. Its website says that the FCO

“advise against all travel to Yemen. This includes the mainland and all islands. If you’re in Yemen, you should leave immediately.”

There has been no British embassy in Yemen for over a year, and the FCO has advised people against travelling there since 2011.

But what of the citizens of Yemen? If Yemen is not safe for you, Mr Deputy Speaker, or for me, it is not safe for Fahim and it is certainly not a safe place for the citizens of Yemen. The last figures I obtained from the Home Office show that, for the first half of last year, only 14—I repeat, 14—asylum claims by Yemeni nationals were successful, while 31 were refused and 221 souls are still awaiting a decision. I hope, when the new figures come out, that they will have improved, but I urge the Government to give some certainty to those in the same situation as Fahim who are ill with worry about their future. If we can keep more Yemenis safe in this country, we have an absolute humanitarian duty to do so.

I attended the excellent meeting of the all-party group on Yemen last week, but I was absolutely shocked by the stories told by the representatives of Oxfam, Save the Children and Saferworld. They reported on a broken country, with severe shortages of fuel, water, food and other resources. Save the Children says that 21.2 million people, including 9.9 million children, are in desperate need of humanitarian aid. They are among the most desperate in the world.

The aid agencies tell us that they do not have all the funds they require. They are very much asking for their partner agencies in other parts of Europe to get more money from those countries. It has been mentioned that the UK has been generous, and we have been generous, but we need to get more aid to those agencies. The agencies cannot get access to all the people who need their help. People have been displaced in the country multiple times, and much of the infrastructure is struggling to cope.

The situation in Yemen is deteriorating daily. Twitter brings me news today of more bombs dropped on civilian areas. The Yemen Post reports today that, in the past 24 hours, 25 civilians have been killed by air strikes, 45 have been injured and 17 homes have been destroyed. Yesterday, 16 were killed and 31 injured when a factory was attacked in Amran. If such a level of carnage was happening in this country, we would be outraged and we would act. If a hospital here got hit by bombs or missiles, as no fewer than three Médecins sans Frontières medical facilities have been in the past three months, we would find that unacceptable.

As well as those struggling with the humanitarian crisis, medics in Yemen are struggling to do their job of patching up the people hit by bombs and injured in conflict, because they are coming under attack themselves. It is clear that the conflict in Yemen is being carried out with no respect for international humanitarian law. Hospitals are supposed to be off limits. Dr Joanne Liu, the international president of MSF, has stated that,

“the UK Foreign Secretary claimed that there have been no deliberate breaches of international humanitarian law in Yemen…This implies that mistakenly bombing a protected hospital would be tolerable.”

It is not.

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. She is illustrating the horrors of war, which largely occur in populated areas when one adversary chooses to hide within such populated areas. Unfortunately, that leads to casualties. We are not in any way saying that when a civilian area or facility is attacked or destroyed that is somehow acceptable; it absolutely is not. When there is collateral damage of that form, it is important for whichever side has done it to put its hand up and say that it will conduct an investigation. We are not saying it is right, but we are making it clear—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. In fairness to the Minister, he cannot take advantage of the situation. We are struggling to get everybody in, and interventions are meant to be very short. He cannot make a speech now, given that he will be making a speech later. That is unfair to everybody.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I have just under six minutes to answer this too short debate, and I cannot do justice to the quality and the detail of the questions and concerns that have been raised. As I have done in previous debates, I assure hon. Members that I will write to them to give them my best answer. This debate, short though it is—I join others in saying that we should have longer debates—has shown that there is interest, concern and expertise in this House.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for securing this important debate. As many hon. Members did, she started by talking about the humanitarian devastation in Yemen and said this was the forgotten war. I had the opportunity at the current conference on Syria to speak to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. I said, “Look at the support that Martin Kobler is given in Libya and that Staffan de Mistura is given in dealing with the Geneva talks, and compare that with the support given to Ismail Ahmed, the UN special envoy for Yemen. They are not on the same scale.” There is an acknowledgement that more needs to be done by the international community because of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe taking place there.

The hon. Lady also mentioned concerns about oil and other assets needed to keep people alive getting into the country, as did others. She said that the UK is looking the other way, but, as we have heard in passionate speeches from Members on both sides of the House, Britain certainly is not looking the other way. We are one of the largest donors and supporters of the country. We are working to support the UN envoy and we are working towards a political solution. She touched on the 119 incidents mentioned by the UN report, and I intervened on her to qualify my own comments. The Opposition spokesman, whom I welcome to his place, asked me about that. I did raise the issue with the Saudi representatives at the Syria conference, and I also spoke to President Hadi on the phone today, raising the concerns about what is happening in Yemen. I also had the opportunity to speak to the UN envoy to raise the concerns about the scale and profile of what is happening. I am sorry that there has been a delay in the talks following the ceasefire that took place in December, and we are working hard to establish what needs to come first, before the ceasefire. I am referring to the confidence-building measures, which are the prelude to then making sure that the ceasefire can last.

My hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) gave a passionate speech, again calling this the forgotten war and talking about Yemen being a complex and ancient land. He also commended the role DFID is playing and our contributions there, and I concur with him on that.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) articulated his own experience of Yemen. Indeed, there are others in the House who have lived in or who were born in that country as well. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words of support. He touched on the wider concerns of extremism in the Arab peninsula, not least with al-Qaeda, which was responsible for a number of attacks on the mainland, and he made an important link between what is happening in the region and the security that we have in our own country as well, and that should not be forgotten.

The day before yesterday, I met the culture Minister of Oman and raised some of those concerns with him. It was a private meeting, but it was very helpful to have such a frank conversation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) stepped back and looked at the wider regional picture. He reminded the House that, from a maritime perspective, Yemen is one of the seven global pinch points in the world. He also talked about the threat from other extremist organisations, such as Daesh, which recently killed the governor of Aden. Indeed, al-Qaeda runs the town of Mukalla, which is a port on the southern coast. He also mentioned the effect of change by asking what would happen if the Administration in Saudi Arabia were changed. It is a liberal wing that is running that very conservative country. Of course we want change and modernisation, but it must be done at a workable pace.

Let me turn now to my friend, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), whom I have known for a couple of decades—we used to represent different student unions at university. It was a pleasure to stand in front of the International Development Committee, of which he is Chairman. I offer on record to meet him in private to talk about some of the detail, as I appreciate that he and his Committee members were a little frustrated in my not being able to answer all their questions. He talked about the city of Taiz. Sadly, President Hadi has confirmed that the city has again been cut off and that humanitarian aid cannot get in. The hon. Gentleman again raised the matter of the report of the UN expert panel. I can confirm that we are looking into its findings, but there is a UN process as well, which was pre-empted when the report was leaked. None the less, there is a process, and we will be following it and looking at the findings.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the formation of the Committees on Arms Export Control. It is absolutely fantastic. Why has it taken so long? It is an important aspect from a legislative perspective of holding the Executive to account. I am pleased to see that it is to be reformed. He also touched on the Human Rights Council resolution in October. There is a consensus there, and he will be aware of that. As much as any individual would want to push forward a particular line, we have to leave the room with what will actually work, and it was decided that the resolution would work. I should make it clear that the council then determined that it would provide assistance to Yemen’s national independent commission of inquiry, which will look into the details. It will then report back to the Human Rights Council. If it is felt that the inquiry is not independent enough, then that is the vehicle that can be used for that to be recognised, rather than having a general call for an independent inquiry.

Time is against me. I have so many other comments to make and answers to provide. As I have said, I will write to Members with my response to this debate. I can say that this Government take what is happening in Yemen very seriously. I personally have devoted an awful lot of time trying to remain at the forefront so that I have some influence. I recognise the concern that this House has over the human rights issues, and I will take them away with me. I am grateful that we have had this opportunity to debate these matters. I certainly hope that, the next time we do so, we are not limited to a 90-minute debate.