1000 Days of Western-Backed Saudi War Crimes in Yemen - What Next?

Rasa - This just in: Some 350 Nobel peace prize laureates, celebrities, politicians and academics have slammed Western leaders and governments for “stoking the flames of war” in Yemen.

News ID: 435475

Date: 25 December 2017 - 01:29

RNA - In a statement marking the 1,000th day of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, signatories of the #Yemencantwait petition called on the leaders of the US, France and the UK to urgently broker a ceasefire and put an end to the medieval blockades which are intentionally (emphasis here) preventing food and vital medical supplies from reaching desperate civilians. The statement further warns the West’s inaction will lead to the deaths of thousands of Yemeni children.

The strongly worded statement reads, “The US, UK, and France, as permanent members of the UN Security Council and major weapons suppliers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, bear a special responsibility to use the full extent of their leverage to press their partners in the region to end the crisis, instead of stoking the flames of a war that is strangling an entire population and risks destabilizing the entire region. They could be the brokers of peace.”

Few points here: The US and the UK have been particularly unapologetic about the steady stream of weapons they supply to Riyadh.

This culpability in the deadly conflict has raised the ire of numerous human rights campaigners and activists. Last week, the UK-based campaign group Human Rights for Yemen called on Britain’s Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, to prosecute Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for committing war crimes in Yemen and for instigating the “world’s worst humanitarian disaster,” killing 130 children each day.

Moreover, the Saudi-led coalition has no right to wage an illegal military campaign against Yemen just because they want to reinstate ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, much less commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Quite the opposite, the Yemeni people have every right to strike back under the banner of the UN Charter. Speaking of the UN, the world body doesn’t have the clout to stop the Saudi madness, and that gives further right to the resistance movement in Yemen to target the Saudi palaces in Riyadh with ballistic missiles.

As is, the Yemeni people have been left to their own devices and the UN continues to cave in to political pressure, underplaying the suffering of millions of civilians, by watering down criticism of the Saudi-led coalition’s grave violations of international law.

Every time the world body makes concessions that allow perpetrators of crimes under international law to evade criticism or justice, it emboldens others to commit violations that cause immense misery to people around the world.

While the overdue listing of the Saudi-led coalition in the CAAC report and the ‘list of shame’ is welcome, it is a shame that the UN doesn’t take any step further, easily caves in to pressure, and only includes it in a new category specifically designed to limit condemnation of the coalition.

Under its own Charter, the UN is expected to do everything possible to keep the pressure on Western states that blatantly disregard the Yemenis' civilian lives. The US, the UK and other Western states that supply arms for use by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen must be forced to stop doing so and the United Nations Security Council should impose an arms embargo to bring an end to such horrific war crimes.

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