By Fionna Smyth
Iona Craig’s powerful report on the suffering of Yemen’s people (Children starve as aid is held at border, 13 November) pulls no punches at the depth the country’s humanitarian crisis has reached.
This is no natural disaster but the result of a callous, calculated and cynical regional power play over the fate of the poorest country in the Middle East. Sadly our own government is an active party in this tragedy. Despite growing evidence of the human consequences, the UK government has allowed the export of a staggering £4.3bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia to carry out its bombing campaign.
After nearly 1,000 days of conflict the inevitable result has been the world’s largest hunger crisis, an unprecedented cholera epidemic, the destruction of homes, hospitals and schools and 21 million people in need of emergency aid. All sides to the conflict bear responsibility for the appalling carnage.
The UK government needs to change tack or risk being on the wrong side of a historic human catastrophe. It can start by insisting that the blockade of all Yemen ports is ended, that there is the free flow of goods within the country and that there is an immediate ceasefire and re-energised peace talks.
Fionna Smyth
Head of humanitarian advocacy, Oxfam GB
• Sometimes there are news items that appear separately but are surely connected. Here is Theresa May at the Cenotaph placing a wreath to remember the sacrifice of the service women and men killed in war. Then there is her government trying to maintain more sales of fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. And then there is the dire state of the Yemeni women, men and children, now suffering a cholera outbreak without adequate food, water and medicines, mainly as a result of the bombing by the Saudis with aircraft purchased from the UK.
Source: The Guardian, Edited by Website Team
