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Yemen crisis: Questions to ask your MP

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  • How does Her Majesty's Government justify the continued export of UK-manufactured weapons to Saudi Arabia - a country guilty of frequent violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen, including using UK weapons?

  • The UK is looking increasingly complicit in what the UN has dubbed "the world's worst humanitarian crisis" in Yemen as a result of the UK's apparent unconditional support for the Saudi-led coalition. How can the UK live up to its responsibility to maintain international peace and security as a permanent member of the Security Council while politically and materially supporting a coalition which the UN has identified as responsible for the majority of civilian deaths in the Yemen conflict?

  • The UK's conduct with respect to its practice of exporting arms to Saudi Arabia which may be used in Yemen is damaging the Arms Trade Treaty - a key building block of the rules-based international system.  Many of our allies in Europe have already announced restrictions on sales to the Saudi-led coalition, which the UN has identified as responsible for the majority of civilian deaths in the Yemen conflict. Given HMG's express commitment to strengthen the rules-based international system, as laid out in the 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, is the Government not undermining its own strategy?

  • Questions are being asked about the UK's role as the Security Council lead-member on Yemen given the UK's close political and arms-export relationship with Saudi Arabia - a country leading a military intervention in Yemen.  In over 3 years of conflict there has been very few Security Council outputs - just one resolution and a handful of statements and not a single direct criticism of Saudi Arabia, a country accused by the UN as using "the threat of starvation as an instrument of war".  Will the UK urgently build support for and table a balanced Security Council Resolution demanding parties to the conflict to enter into peace talks without preconditions and urge, through bilateral pressure, the Saudis to participate?