The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is taking the government to the High Court, arguing that UK arms have contributed to breaching international humanitarian law and one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
According to Oxfam, the UK has licensed at least £7.9bn ($9.6bn) in arms to Saudi Arabia across 547 licences since 2015, including Tornado and Typhoon aircraft and bombs.
CAAT says the true value of arms sales could be more than £23bn (around $28bn) when additional “open licensees” are taken into account.
A previous court challenge by CAAT in 2019 forced the UK government to suspend arms sales, but after an internal review sales resumed in 2021 on the basis that the breaches of humanitarian law were “isolated incidents”.
“This is a government that cares more about profit than war crimes and the deaths of civilians,” said Emily Apple, media coordinator at CAAT.
“Its argument that these are ‘isolated incidents’ is total nonsense and deeply offensive to all the Yemeni people who’ve had their lives destroyed by UK weapons.”
The judicial review is expected to last until 2 February.
Saudi Arabia launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistical support from the United States and other Western states.
The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The war and Saudi Arabia’s economic siege on Yemen are thought to have contributed to more than 300,000 deaths over eight years, according to UN estimates.
At least 8,983 civilians were killed in air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition, including attacks that targeted hospitals, weddings and funerals.
Middle East Eye reported on Monday that the UK government refused to release information about weapons sales to Saudi Arabia during the Yemen war, citing the expense of culling through the documents.
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