[Relevant documents: e-petition 326932, Broker a ceasefire for all sides in Yemen to carry out humanitarian aid; oral evidence taken before the International Development Committee of Session 2017-19, on 8 October 2019, on Follow-up on Yemen, Syria, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, HC 2682;oral evidence taken before the International Development Committee, on 15 September 2020, on Humanitarian crises monitoring: impact of Coronavirus, HC 292;written evidence to the International Development Committee, on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, reported to the House on 27 March 2020; andwritten evidence to the International Development Committee, on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, reported to the House on 21 April 2020.]
Before I call Tim Loughton to move the motion, I should point out to colleagues that the Backbench Business debates are very well subscribed, so there will be a time limit—it will probably start at either four or five minutes for Back Benchers—to ensure we can get everybody in during the two debates.
That this House has considered the situation in Yemen.
I am delighted to move the motion, and I am aware of the very great interest in this debate, so I will make my comments as quickly as possible. If people would not intervene, that would be helpful, and I do not propose to take the few minutes at the end to respond to give as many Members as possible the opportunity to come in. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. We have tried many times—it was aborted some six months ago because of lockdown—but now, at last, we are able to debate this situation.
The trouble is that the situation has not got any better. I am not surprised that there is so much interest in Yemen today, because it has become the victim of the most lethal and complex cocktail: an extended and ostensibly insoluble civil war with international ramifications; various other man-made disasters; numerous natural disasters and potentially catastrophic environmental ones; an economic meltdown; and now, on top of it all, a deadly pandemic that Yemen was least prepared and equipped to deal with.
There is also great interest beyond Parliament. I gather that more than 210,000 people have signed a petition calling for a ceasefire, and that that petition has been tagged to this debate. Alas, in the six months spent trying to secure this debate, the situation has deteriorated yet further on multiple fronts. It is vital that, despite all the distractions at home and across the world in dealing with the pandemic, we neither forget nor neglect the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, which Yemen remains.
I chair the all-party parliamentary group on Yemen, and I pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), who I am glad to see will be participating in the debate, and to the secretariat provided by Jack Patterson, who has kept members updated and arranged briefings, including just this Tuesday with the British deputy ambassador in Yemen, Simon Smart, the military attaché and representatives from Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières, which, with many other agencies, are doing such an amazing job in almost impossible conditions in Yemen. I pay tribute to all those agencies and workers
I thank the hon. Gentleman for leading the debate; he is making it clear just how heartbreaking the situation is for the people on the ground in Yemen. Does he agree that that is why we should stand proud and firm by the 0.7% of gross national income that this country gives in aid to other countries? It is so sorely needed, especially during this pandemic.
I agree with the hon. Lady, and I will finish on the figures about the United Kingdom. We have been the third largest donor and are one of the most important donors at the moment. The reasons are obvious, and the results are so important.
To cap it all, ironically, recent floods in Hajjah and Amran have destroyed crops, and they have now been hit by swarms of locusts—truly a human tragedy of biblical proportions. Added to that, the Red sea faces a potential environmental catastrophe from the FSO Safer, a 45-year-old oil tanker loaded with more than 1 million barrels of crude oil, anchored 60 km off the rebel-held port of Hodeidah and left to decay for the last five years, with no agreement over access for engineers.
So we can see why the country is almost totally dependent on aid from the international community and the heroic efforts of aid organisations and their staff, who are working in extremely dangerous conditions as a result of conflict and disease, with the added challenge of getting aid in through blockaded ports under fire or via the main airport, which has now closed again, as well as the everyday problems of corruption and bureaucracy on all sides using access to aid as a military weapon. Indeed, the Houthis tried to impose a tax on aid supplies coming in. NGO buildings have been looted and aid workers arrested.
The aid itself is now seriously in question. So far this year, only 37% of the funding requested in the humanitarian response plan has been provided, as some of the most generous donors previously—including the US, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—have reduced or withdrawn their funding at the worst possible time. As the International Rescue Committee points out, it was that funding that narrowly prevented famine two years ago, but now more than 9 million Yemenis have seen their aid cut, driving them to the brink of starvation; 12 of the UN’s 30 major programmes have already been scaled back; and a further 20 programmes could be reduced or closed completely if funding fails to emerge urgently.
It is a great pleasure and a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) in this debate. It is not the first debate on Yemen that I have spoken in, and Members present who were in the previous Parliament will recall the eloquent contributions that our former colleague, Keith Vaz, made to those earlier debates, having been born in Yemen himself.
There are two issues that we are trying to gather together today. The first is the petition, which my hon. Friend has already described. At present, it sets out to put pressure on all groups to halt their attacks in order to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered. I will say more on that in a moment. The second issue is the letters I have been receiving that originated with Oxfam. They are one-sided in their approach and put pressure on the Government to try to prevent arms from being sold to Saudi Arabia. I will deal with these two issues in turn.
We must all agree with the sentiment of the petition. I am glad to say that the UK has taken a great lead in making available just under £1 billion to provide assistance in what has been described as an absolutely terrible situation. I am pleased that the UK is among the top donors. As my hon. Friend has already pointed out, the coronavirus is making the situation considerably worse. We have to couple that with our diplomatic efforts to bring fighting in Yemen to an end.
As we have heard, 80% of the population is in humanitarian need. My hon. Friend said that there were 2 million displaced people; I think that the figure is actually closer to 4 million. We have heard about the big impact on children and their access to schools. We should also note that humanitarian access is constrained—and many people delivering humanitarian aid have been threatened or detained—in the Houthi-controlled areas.
Let me turn to the second matter: the letters originating with Oxfam, which puts the blame almost entirely on Saudi Arabia. There may be many reasons for doing that and there might be a justification for all those reasons, but we need to separate them if we are to make any headway and put the blame where it belongs, which is with the Houthi rebels. I say that this is one-sided because the Houthi rebels are being funded by Iran; that has been admitted. Unless we can stop the Iranian funding of the Houthi rebels, it is useless to put all the blame, and an arms embargo, on Saudi Arabia. That simply takes one side out of the equation, but leaves the other side fully funded.
It is the view of many constituents in Ilford South that this Government should hang their head in shame at their central role in helping to create the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by training, equipping and enabling the Saudi regime to bomb innocent Yemeni civilians. In the past five years alone, Britain has licensed more than £5 billion-worth of arms—mainly in the form of bombs and planes—to Saudi Arabia. In that same period, 60% of all civilian deaths in Yemen have been caused by the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing. Even moderate estimates put the number of deaths from Saudi air strikes at more than 12,000. Perhaps that is why the Ministry of Defence refuses to reveal whether these are UK-made weapons that the Saudi regime has dropped on civilians, despite holding that information on its tracker database.
After suspending new arms sales to the Saudi regime last year, the Government resumed their deadly support in July, once again turning a blind eye to the war crimes that it is enabling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to commit. Saudi Arabia is being allowed to bomb Yemen without any form of accountability or investigation, which is completely unacceptable. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a penholder on Yemen, the UK is obligated to provide leadership in helping to bring about an effective political settlement and end to the ongoing conflict in Yemen.
While this Government are complicit in arming, training and deploying special forces—and all but dropping bombs ourselves—under international law Britain will be party to this conflict. At the very least, British arms sales to Saudi Arabia should be immediately suspended to restrict Saudi Arabia’s ability to carry out air strikes on Yemenis and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. Anything less would be a continuation of the death and destruction there. Let us be clear: the Saudi air force is believed to have carried out at least 90 unlawful air strikes on civilians in the past year alone, with more than 20,000 air strikes since the war began. That is almost 12 attacks on Houthi areas every day. The fact that we are still using our RAF bases to service BAE Systems’ logistical support flights for the Saudi air force is a slap in the face to the UN-led peace process.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for securing this debate. May I also take this opportunity to thank him formally in the House for so willingly and adeptly taking on the chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group for Yemen earlier this year when I was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Department for International Development?
Members will know that Yemen is an issue very close to my heart. I was born in the former protectorate of Aden and have always felt closely connected with the country, which is beautiful, ancient and culturally rich. I was first elected in 2015 and often spoke on Yemen in that Parliament. It is truly tragic how little has changed since then. In fact, despite the efforts of the UK, the UN and many others, the political, economic and humanitarian situation has deteriorated. My hon. Friend has already laid out the humanitarian need and I know others will do so, so I would like to concentrate on the political situation, which is as difficult as ever.
I am hopeful that there are small signs of progress. The Riyadh agreement in December 2015 saw a ceasefire and a move towards a unified Government in the south. Although the Southern Transitional Council pulled out of that deal earlier this year, I am glad that that has been reversed and efforts are now moving in the right direction. This is a really important step and we must praise the efforts of the Saudis and the Emiratis to bring it about.
The other major party is the Houthis, and I welcome rumours that the Saudi Government may be holding talks with them as well. There are many sides in this war and only by engaging with all of them can we bring about a lasting peace. With that in mind, I am glad that UN special envoy Martin Griffiths recently held talks with Iranian diplomats in Geneva. Working with Iran will be crucial in bringing the Houthis on board. The UK Government, the UN and MPs in Parliament must continue to support Martin Griffiths in his efforts to promote his joint declaration. This aims for a national ceasefire, humanitarian and economic measures, and the resumption of the comprehensive political process. It provides a framework for peace in Yemen, an olive branch that various factions must now reach out and grasp.
When I served my previous term in the House, I was deeply concerned about the situation in Yemen and the plight of the Yemeni people. Like so many others inside and outside this place, I spoke on the subject on a number of occasions because of the dire plight of the people in Yemen, and I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) have been tireless in their focus on Yemen.
Five years on, the situation is no less perilous; in fact, it would be fair to describe it as even worse, with the horror and continued risk of famine affecting millions of people and with ever-increasing dangers to the health of the population, who are now further imperilled by covid and the continuing and devastating conflict. We are all struggling here to cope with the challenges of covid, and it is hard for everyone—we worry about our older relatives, people who are more vulnerable and our children—but I cannot imagine dealing with those concerns in the midst of the hell facing people and families in Yemen.
As the conflict goes into its sixth year, the humanitarian concerns are hugely pressing. It has been reported to the UN Security Council that the UN appeal has received only 30% of the funding it requires, compared with 90% two years ago. Meanwhile, covid-19 runs rampant, healthcare facilities are rendered unusable by continued violence, and further environmental catastrophe looms because of the long-stranded and decaying oil tanker in the Red sea. There are so many terrible issues affecting Yemen that what people are trying to deal with is almost beyond our comprehension.
It is also beyond my comprehension that, in July this year, the UK Government decided to resume the sales to Saudi Arabia of arms for use in the war in Yemen. The UK Government know that there is data from the Civilian Impact Monitoring Project from July, when this decision was made, showing a total of 42 airstrikes in Yemen in that month impacting on civilians. The strikes are increasing in number, they are widespread and they are causing untold harm. Why on earth the UK Government, knowing this, described them as isolated incidents is beyond me. It is unforgivably callous. However, the sales have continued, despite the questions posed by the Court of Appeal about the use of weapons to violate human rights. The Government’s persistence with these arms sales speaks volumes, and it is critical that urgent changes are made to the oversight and review of arms export licences.
The question we face relates to the situation in Yemen, and there is a short answer to it: it is appalling. Even before the outbreak of the current, hugely destructive three-way civil war, conditions in Yemen were terrible and getting worse. Yemen has an overwhelmingly subsistence economy, where the majority of the population relies on agriculture for their survival, but water—that most basic and fundamental of commodities—is literally running out. In the 1970s, groundwater could be found at a depth of 30 metres in the Sana’a basin—deep enough, one might think—but now it has retreated to a depth of 1,200 metres, so people have to go more than a kilometre deep before they find water. Without war, without corruption, without lawlessness and without maladministration, this is an existential crisis in its own right, but war and corruption and lawlessness and mal- administration have further exacerbated the problem, as failed-state cash crops, notably khat, have displaced domestic agriculture and are now responsible for a staggering 40% of all water use.
The current political instability was sparked by a general and popular revolt against the coercive and kleptocratic Government of President Saleh—the corruption, the state theft, the authoritarianism and the attempt to change the constitution so that he could become, effectively, president for life. It is a tragedy that the green shoots of the Arab spring that forced President Saleh from office and installed President Hadi in his place have been trampled by the factional insurgency of the Houthis in the north, with the resulting descent into civil war.
Others in this debate have highlighted the massive humanitarian crisis that has unfolded in Yemen over the last decade, together with the substantial failure of the international community in funding and then implementing a sufficient humanitarian response. There is so much need and it is immediate. For my part, while I fully endorse the urgency of the need for immediate humanitarian assistance, I want to focus on the longer-term solutions to the current devastation, since we all know that the only real way to protect the population of Yemen is by a political accommodation to the conflict.
2:16 pm
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Yemeni conflict is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the modern era. In January, the death toll passed 100,000, and last month, more civilians were killed by the war than in any other month so far this year. Ten million Yemenis face acute food shortages, while 7 million require treatment for malnutrition. Twenty-four million civilians, or 80% of the population, are dependent on international aid and assistance, and it is shameful. It is shameful that Britain is complicit in such an atrocity.
The UK supplies weapons and crucial military support to the Saudi-led coalition, which is responsible for the highest number of reported civilian fatalities. The UN has verified the deaths of at least 7,700 civilians since 2015, although some estimates are much higher, and it found that 60% of those were due to bombing raids by the Saudi-led coalition. The UK is estimated to have licensed £5.3 billion-worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015. British officials have also provided military advice, including on bombing, targets and tactics. In contrast, international funding at the 2020 Yemen pledging conference in June fell £1 billion short of the UN’s target. The UK contributed just £160 million, which is £40 million less than in 2019 and amounts to just 3% of the value of UK arms sold to Saudi Arabia. British companies should not be allowed to profit from the suffering of the people of Yemen.
Exports of British arms to Saudi Arabia were halted by a legal challenge in the summer of 2019, yet after a court ruling in July this year, the UK is to resume these sales, despite seemingly clear evidence that they will be used against Yemeni civilians in violation of international humanitarian law. This is criminal. The Ministry of Defence recently revealed that it has logged more than 500 Saudi air raids that are in possible breach of international law in Yemen—an increase of more than 200 in just over two and a half years. That directly contradicts the Government’s recent justification for resuming arms sales on the basis that only isolated incidents without any pattern have occurred. In fact, the UK Government’s duplicity is shameful. On the one hand, they sign resolutions and speak of their desire to end the conflict, yet on the other, they continue to facilitate the suffering of the Yemeni people by providing the weapons that rain down on civilian houses.
Last week, the United Nations Secretary-General reported that there were more than 2,000 confirmed cases of covid-19 in Yemen. The country is already suffering from the largest cholera outbreak on record, with more than 2 million cases. A coronavirus outbreak would compound the misery, which the UK has shamefully allowed to fester. The global pandemic should have offered our Government an opportunity to step away from the conflict as well as from other theatres of war, which is causing so much suffering across the globe.
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Let me deal with the political and military situation first. This year marks five years of a devastating conflict in Yemen and almost 10 years of chaos since the Arab spring in that country. Yemen desperately needs an effective and lasting ceasefire. Out of a total population of some 30 million, 24 million people rely wholly or partly on aid, and they desperately need protection now.
Yet ceasefires and peace agreements in Yemen have a reputation for being broken almost as soon as they are brokered. The comprehensive Stockholm agreement, brokered in December 2018, set out a comprehensive peace plan. It was backed in January 2019 by the United Nations’ unanimously adopting the UK-drafted resolution 2452, which established a special political mission and special envoy, Martin Griffiths, who has worked tirelessly to secure a settlement.
The agreement promised the withdrawal of Houthi and Government-led forces from Hodeidah, a large-scale prisoner transfer, UN observers and various other urgently needed measures. The United Arab Emirates, which had been very involved with the conflict, ostensibly stepped back and withdrew its troops from Yemen. The position has been complicated, though, by the emergence of the Southern Transitional Council, who have taken control of Aden, fragmenting the Government position in trying to present a united resistance to the Houthis.
Great importance has been placed on the Riyadh agreement, signed in December 2019 between the Yemeni Government and the STC, outlining a series of measures to bring peace to the south of Yemen; but the agreement broke after just eight months, although Martin Griffiths and others work hard to revive it. The fragile pause in the conflict in 2019 broke down in 2020 after an attack in northern Yemen. A unilateral ceasefire by the Saudi-led coalition in April 2020 in the light of covid-19 expired in May, but The Guardian reported that the Houthis had broken a truce no fewer than 241 times in the space of just two days.
I could talk about abuses on all sides: the 42 airstrikes in July alone, which particularly impacted on and killed civilians; drones dropping grenades on civilian targets; and Houthi missile strikes on Riyadh in Saudi Arabia just earlier this month. The catalogue of abuse, devastation, destruction and mistrust on all sides goes on. As a result, 10 new frontlines have emerged since the beginning of 2020, with particularly intense fighting in the past four months, especially around the strategically important areas of Ma’rib, which controls access to the oilfields, and Taiz, and in the Hodeidah governate on the west coast.
Peace is as elusive as ever, yet death and suffering are worse than ever. More than 250,000 Yemenis, at least, have died since 2015, including 100,000 as a result of combat and 130,000 from hunger and disease. That is probably a very conservative estimate. It includes an estimated 1,000 civilians killed or seriously injured in the conflict in the first six months of this year, including 100 children. There are more than 2 million internally displaced people, with a majority in and around Ma’rib, which is currently under siege from the Houthis, who are throwing everything at that city, despite suffering very high casualties. Clearly they view the lives of their troops as cheap.
Some 24.3 million people need humanitarian aid—24.3 million out of a population of 30 million. That includes 12.2 million children. A total of 20.1 million people are food-insecure, and 20.5 million people lack clean water or sanitation. There have been more than 2.3 million cholera cases since 2017, as a collapsed health system has been woefully inadequate even before covid hit.
The exact impact of covid is unknown, but the 1,000 cases reported in Sana’a are surely a woeful underestimate of the reality. We all saw the images on the news of mass graves being dug in the capital. The International Rescue Committee projects that the most likely scenario is that covid could infect nearly 16 million people and kill more than 42,000, making the fatality rate in Yemen one of the highest in the world. There is little chance of testing. We might think we have a problem with testing in the United Kingdom, but there are just 118 tests for every 1 million people in Yemen, compared with 41,500 in the UK. Just 0.01% of the population stand a chance of being tested, and there is no clue about how Yemen will cope if it is hit by a second wave.
Since 2015, air raids have hit water and health facilities more than 200 times. Oxfam reports that those remaining often lack electricity and fresh water, and even if a hospital is operating, fuel is so expensive that people in remoter areas cannot get transport to hospital, and their conditions worsen untreated. Médecins sans Frontières, whose volunteers have done incredible work under fire, reports that many medical staff—if not most—have not been paid for years, and they struggle to survive and carry on their jobs in the most extraordinary circumstances.
The water shortage has brought big challenges for food supply, as farmers cannot irrigate their crops, and more than 90% of Yemen’s food is now imported. With a collapsing currency and an economy that has shrunk by 45% since 2015, UNICEF forecasts that the number of malnourished children under the age of five will grow by 20% over the next six months, to reach 2.4 million—2.4 million malnourished children.
Yemen is facing a perfect storm of a crumbling economy, reducing aid, restrictions placed on humanitarian access by warring parties, the continuing impact of an intractable conflict, and now the additional pressures of covid. Amid all this, the support and financial aid from the United Kingdom has been a rare, but desperately needed, constant. We are the third largest donor behind the US and Saudi Arabia. The UK has committed nearly £8 billion of assistance since the conflict began, including £160 million at the recent pledging conference. UK support has met the immediate food needs of more than 1 million Yemenis every month. It has treated 70,000 children for malnutrition and provided more than 1 million people with improved water and basic sanitation. The new money in the latest round will provide medical consultations, train 12,000 healthcare workers, boost 4,000 crumbling health centres, and help in the fight against covid. The Education Cannot Wait campaign has helped girls, especially, who are missing out on education and helped programmes against the rise in violence against women and girls in particular, and against child labour. These are all problems affecting Yemen, as if it did not have enough problems already.
As the penholder on Yemen at the UN Security Council, the UK is in a crucial position. It is leading the international community to do more to respond to the Yemen crisis, and Martin Griffiths is doing an extraordinary job. We have a proud record of support and I hope that when the Minister speaks, he will confirm that that support will continue. However, there can be no real progress without a sustainable ceasefire leading to peace talks that are broad and inclusive, not just with Government forces, the STC and the Houthis but with all aspects of civil society and with the support of the regional powers, who will hopefully return to the donor table. Again, I hope the Minister can update the House about the UK’s continuing to play a leading and proactive role to help to bring this about.
Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, and the world’s preoccupation with fighting covid at the moment cannot be an excuse for sidelining the unfolding tragedy that continues to engulf the Arab world’s poorest nation. It is difficult to think of a more tragic combination of circumstances affecting a nation and its people quite as toxically and systematically as is happening now in Yemen, and it has been going on for far too long. It is time for peace. It is time for the world to put pressure on the warring factions and their backers, and time to rally around the people of Yemen to regroup, recover and rebuild. I am sure that the whole House will want to show its support for that.
There is also a link between the Houthis, and ISIS and al-Qaeda. It is a flimsy, nebulous link, and there is a lot of double-talk in describing it, but it is there and it is making a big impact. We should therefore ensure that we double our efforts to get a good diplomatic solution.
The Government need to move beyond gestures and apply pressure on Governments violating international law through tangible action. In addition to halting arms sales, tying humanitarian rights to trade deals could be crucial in stopping cycles of oppression and violence that, if unaddressed, will continue to worsen the deepening crisis in Yemen. Just yesterday, a declassified UK investigation revealed that the RAF is training Saudi pilots on UK soil, equipping them with the destructive skills they need to bomb, maim and murder innocent civilians. This is a dark day indeed for the RAF. I am proud of our military forces and the RAF and we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the battle of Britain, but it is a shameful use of our military to support such a repressive regime.
Our involvement in this conflict and our relationship with the Saudi dictatorship have had a direct impact on the lives of British citizens, too. Just last month, 21-year-old Lance Corporal Ahmed al-Batati, a British soldier who protested against arms sales to Saudi Arabia, was arrested by the Royal Military Police. His whereabouts are currently unknown and it remains unclear whether he has been charged with any offence. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten the House on that at some point in the near future.
There can be no military solution to this conflict. Labour supports the United Nations in its attempts to bring an end to the conflict through a nationwide ceasefire and peace talks. Britain does not merely supply the bombs that fall on Yemen; it provides personnel and expertise. That is the crucial point. That is where we need to apply pressure. Saudi Arabia is estimated to have spent about £55 billion every year on this failing war. To put that into context, that is almost four times the current GDP of Yemen and enough money to have secured the livelihoods of generations of Yemenis. It is time for the UK Government to step up and use this country’s position and influence in the world to persuade all parties in Yemen to end the fighting and usher in a more sensible, peaceful accord. Only when there is peace in Yemen can there be an effective response to the humanitarian and health crisis unfolding there.
I would like to end by talking briefly about an ecological disaster waiting to happen off Yemen’s shores. The Safer oil tanker is anchored about 37 miles off Hodeidah in the Red sea. It has received virtually no maintenance since the start of the war in 2015. On board, there are just over 1 million barrels of crude oil and experts warn of an environmental catastrophe if the vessel breaks apart. The marine ecology of the Red sea would need over 30 years to recover. The Yemeni environmental group, Holm Akhdar, estimates that more than 126,000 people working in the fishing industry could lose their livelihoods. That would only add to the humanitarian crisis.
To make the issue all the more pressing, recent photos appear to show water entering the Safer, which could cause it to sink or explode. The Houthis absolutely must keep their promise and, without delay, allow UN teams to access the vessel and secure its cargo. Currently, the Houthis are refusing, because they want the rights to sell the oil, but that cannot be allowed to stand when the environmental stakes are so high—the oil is likely to have gone off and lost most of its value in any case. The international community must urgently press the Houthis to give the UN access. I welcome the fact that the UK Government have already done so, and I urge them to keep up the pressure.
This has all been allowed to go on for far too long. I welcome the debate as a chance to raise the profile of this issue, and I hope that by doing so we can help to move things in the right direction and start getting Yemen back on its feet.
As well as pressing for a ceasefire, the UK Government need to explain why they are not following the examples of Canada, Germany, Denmark, the UN, the US Congress and the European Parliament, among others, in calling for an embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, in line with international guidelines on not selling arms to those involved in conflicts that target civilians. We need to stop enabling these gross abuses of human rights and to live up to international obligations. The UK Government are currently utterly failing to do that. I therefore ask Ministers please to reflect on the plight of the people in Yemen, who are suffering so much. Will they please renew calls for an urgent and immediate nationwide ceasefire, and please get a grip on their own involvement by calling a halt to these shameful arms sales?
To pretend that the conflict does not have the established characteristics of a wider proxy war would be disingenuous. The involvement of Iran in supporting the Houthi rebels and the resulting Arab coalition, led by Saudi Arabia in support of the Government, has intensified the conflict, and yet it would be a mistake to conclude that there is therefore an equivalence between the parties. We are members of the United Nations. We are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and it is the United Nations that has recognised the Government of President Hadi as the legitimate Government of Yemen. That is important and it makes a difference. A state has the right—it has the obligation—to defend itself within the international rules of law.
The Stockholm agreement in 2018, as well as the more recent Riyadh agreement, have provided us with the first glimmers of hope. Local ceasefires, humanitarian corridors, prisoner swaps and, crucially, the agreement to continue talks by the parties must surely be the framework through which the conflict can eventually be drawn to a close. I believe that the Government have adopted the right strategy of heavy diplomatic engagement in the region. We cannot force peace on the warring parties, but we can work to create the conditions where the parties can choose peace, and we must continue to do so.
At the start of this pandemic, the UN Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire. It is about time that the Government listened and came here and accounted for their criminal acts.