Local Editor
The UK has promised to deliver food and fuel supplies to Yemen whose population in living on the brink of famine.
An extra £50m will help stave off the “human tragedy” of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for one more month, the UK’s International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said on Monday.
Mordaunt made the announcement during a visit to Djibouti, the tiny African country across the Gulf of Aden where thousands of Yemeni refugees have fled.
But while the UK government has given more than £2m of aid to Yemen since the war began, it has also sold at least £4.6bn in arms to the Saudi-led coalition, which is responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe.
The UK is among several Western governments that been heavily criticised for selling weapons export licences to Saudi Arabia, which rights groups say are destined for use in the Yemeni war.
Tens of thousands have been killed since the Saudi-led coalition attacked Yemen in March 2015.
Figures from the UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT) show that in the two years leading up to the Yemen war, £33m of ML4 licences covering bombs, missiles and countermeasures were approved.
However, in the two years since the start of Saudi bombing in March 2015, the figure increased by 457 per cent to £1.9bn, according to calculations by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).
Licences covering aircraft including Eurofighter jets have also risen by 70 per cent to £2.6bn in the same period.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
