Failure to ban sales to Saudis despite Yemen crisis makes UK a ‘significant violator’ of arms trade treaty, charity says

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

British weapons sales to Saudi Arabia are a serious violation of international law, because the Gulf nation’s bombing campaign in Yemen is regularly hitting civilian targets including schools and hospitals, Oxfam has warned.

The UK government has switched from being an “enthusiastic backer” of the Arms Trade Treaty to “one of the most significant violators”, a senior executive at the charity told a conference on Tuesday on the global agreement in Geneva.

The Saudi-led air campaign was launched in March 2015, aiming to put down a rebellion by Shia Houthis, who have backing from Iran. It was widely seen as part of a regional sectarian proxy war between the two nations.

Since then Riyadh has been criticised by the UN, the EU and human rights groups for repeatedly killing or injuring civilians.

The bombardment has been so intense that medical charity MSF recently announced it was withdrawing from six hospitals in northern Yemen after the fourth airstrike against one of its facilities in less than a year.

The UK has continued military exports to Saudi Arabia over this period, despite the mounting criticism, licensing sales of £3.3bn-worth of arms, according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

British and American military officials are also in the command and control centre for Saudi airstrikes, and have access to lists of targets, although they do not play any role in choosing them, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister has said.

“UK arms and military support are fuelling a brutal war in Yemen, harming the very people the Arms Trade Treaty is designed to protect. Schools, hospitals and homes have been bombed in contravention of the rules of war,” Penny Lawrence, the deputy chief executive of Oxfam GB told the conference.

“The UK government is in denial and disarray over its arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition bombing campaign in Yemen. How can the government insist that others abide by a treaty it helped set up if it flagrantly ignores it?” Lawrence said.

She also accused the government of deliberately misleading parliament over the sales. The Foreign Office last month backtracked on a claim that ministers had assessed Saudi Arabia was not in breach of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

The day before the summer recess it said instead that no assessment of the Saudi campaign had been made, but added that numerous previous statements were errors rather than an attempt to deceive.

At the start of the bombing campaign last March, then-defence secretary Philip Hammond pledged: “We’ll support the Saudis in every practical way short of engaging in combat.”

Sales since then include £2.2bn-worth of aircraft, helicopters and drones, £1.1bn of missiles, bombs and grenades and nearly half a million pounds of armoured vehicles and tanks, the Campaign Against Arms Trade says.

The group won the first round of a legal attempt to prevent the government from selling further weapons to Saudi Arabia earlier this summer, when a high court judge gave permission for a judicial review into whether the sales breach British and European weapons export laws.

The UK government said its sales were under “careful and continual review”, and added that it was satisfied that current export licences for Saudi Arabia meet its regulations, which it described as some of the most robust in the world.

The war has left more than 21 million people in need of humanitarian aid in Yemen, more than in any other country, Oxfam said. More than 6,000 people have been killed, more than 3 million displaced and more than 14 million are suffering hunger and malnutrition.

Col Bob Stewart, a Conservative MP and member of the defence committee who visited an air operations centre in Riyadh, insisted the Saudi coalition was trying to avoid hitting civilians.



“They are doing their level best to sort it out,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “I reckon they have made some mistakes and have breached in the past, but I can tell you this ... things have been really tightened up.”