Britain has earned eight times more from arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other members of the coalition fighting in Yemen than it has spent on aid to help civilians caught up in the conflict, a report has found. Thousands of civilians have been killed since then, with indiscriminate bombing by the Saudi-led coalition accused of being responsible for about two-thirds of the 11, killed in direct attacks.
The court of appeal in June ruled that arms sales to Saudi Arabia β which account for the vast majority of the total β were unlawful. The judgment also accused ministers of ignoring the question of whether airstrikes that killed civilians in Yemen broke international law.
Liam Fox, then international trade secretary, responded by suspending new arms sales to Saudi Arabia while promising to appeal against the verdict. Oxfam called on the government to respect the court judgment, halt arms sales indefinitely, and focus its efforts on halting the conflict and getting more donations for emergency relief. The UN fund for Yemen has received only a third of the funds needed; most vaccination programmes have already stopped as a result.
It also emerged recently that prime minister Boris Johnson, while foreign secretary in , recommended that the UK allow Saudi Arabia to buy British bomb parts expected to be deployed in Yemen, days after an airstrike on a potato factory in the country had killed 14 people. A day after the sale was recommended for approval, a village school in Yemen was hit by another deadly airstrike, part of a pattern of recurrent strikes on civilian infrastructure including hospitals.
Despite repeated requests, the charity has not been interviewed by the British Ministry of Defence or Saudi Joint Incidents Assessment Team about these attacks, it said.
