Aid Groups: States must Stop Selling Weapons to KSA

Local Editor

Campaigners called on governments due to attend the latest round of discussions on the implementation of the Arms Trade Treaty [ATT] in Geneva on 29 February to set their hypocrisy aside and stop selling billions of dollars, worth of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia being used to attack Yemeni civilians.

In a new report, the Control Arms Coalition named France, Germany, Italy, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK, and the US as having reported licenses and sales to Saudi Arabia worth more than $25bn in 2015 including drones, bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles. These are the types of arms currently being used by Saudi Arabia and its allies for gross violations of human rights and possible war crimes during aerial and ground attacks in Yemen.

Relatively, all the arms exporting countries identified in the report are States Parties or signatories to the ATT, which has the aim of "reducing human suffering" through new global rules for the arms trade, which forbid arms transfers that would be used for war crimes or risk being used for serious violations of international law.

Meanwhile, governments are due to attend the Extraordinary Meeting of the Conference of States Parties to the ATT in Geneva on Monday to discuss how implementation of the treaty will be funded and other logistical details.

In addition, Control Arms called on States Parties to include a discussion of the grave situation in Yemen as part of Monday's meeting, and to commit immediately to halting the transfer of weapons to Saudi Arabia and to its allies where these are at serious risk of being used in Yemen.

Although the UK and France were leaders in seeking to secure an ATT, they are now supplying Saudi Arabia with some of the deadliest weapons in the world.

Based on the limited public domain information available, the report estimated the total reported value of arms export licenses and announced sales to Saudi Arabia was more than $25bn during 2015. Of this, States Parties accounted for over $4.9bn, though the exact amount is likely to be much higher.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team