Nadine Osman
Anti-arms trade campaigners have launched a judicial review of the UK’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia, warning that the weapons are exacerbating a major humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen.
The UK High Court began hearing the case brought forward by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) on January 31 and concluded on February 3. It is the latest step in a long-running battle over the legality of a lucrative trade worth more than £23 billion since the war in Yemen began.
The licences to Saudi Arabia include £2.7 billion of equipment in the ML10 category, covering aircraft, helicopters, drones, and related equipment and components, and £4.8 billion in the ML4 category, covering bombs, missiles, grenades, and countermeasures, and related equipment and components.
CAAT says arms exports have contributed to the deaths of thousands of civilians. The UK-based group is challenging the legality of the British government’s decision in 2020 to continue supplying weapons to the Saudi-led coalition involved in Yemen’s nine-year conflict.
CAAT won a similar battle in 2019 when Court of Appeal judges ruled that continuing to licence military equipment that could be used in Yemen’s war for export was illegal, citing concerns that it could be used to commit war crimes.
The government temporarily halted sales following the ruling.
UK law prohibits the export of weapons if there is a “clear risk” that they will be used to commit war crimes. However, exports resumed in mid-2020 under the order of then-trade minister Liz Truss after a government review. The review concluded that possible violations of international humanitarian law committed by actors using weapons supplied by the UK were “isolated.”
British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have continued in recent years, despite the US, the UK’s main ally, imposing a partial ban on weapons exports to the kingdom due to the Yemen war. Meanwhile, campaigners and rights groups have disputed the validity of the government review’s findings.
“The ample evidence of law of war violations by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen throughout the war makes clear that these violations are not simply ‘isolated incidents’ as claimed by the UK government,” Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.
“UK weapons have been used in some of these violations with total impunity,” Jafarnia said. “At a time when the UK is promoting a rules-based international order, and rightly calling out Russia for serious violations of international law, it needs to apply those same rules to itself and end the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
Emily Apple, a spokesperson for CAAT, accused the government of “caring more about profit than war crimes. We cannot sit by while UK bombs kill civilians and cause devastation while UK arms dealers profit,” Apple said.
The war escalated in March 2015, when the Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervened in an attempt to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The coalition has been assisted by several Western powers, including the UK and the US. Both sides in the conflict have since been accused of war crimes during fighting that has killed more than 8,900 people to date, according to the Yemen Data Project.
A United Nations brokered truce agreement reached in April last year and set to expire in early October has largely held. The agreement has delivered the longest stretch of relative calm in Yemen since the war began, but both sides have stepped up moves to economically weaken the other in the interim. The Department of Trade and Industry told The Muslim News it could not comment on legal proceedings.
Photo: Buthaina Muhammad Mansour, 5, is rescued from the rubble after a Saudi-led airstrike on an apartment building killed eight members of her family on August 26, 2017 in Sanaa, Yemen.
(Credit: Aida Faillace/WikiCommons).
