Charity says UK is selling arms to Saudi but criticising it for the Yemen crisis
Christian Aid is warning the UK government against double standards, demanding it stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
The charity claims the UK and other states are violating international law and breaching the UK’s own international commitments, including those to regulate the arms trade.
Currently the UK spends around three times the amount on the military that it spends on aid.
£37bn goes on military spending every year – around £600 per person.
Christian Aid is calling out the UK as complicit in the war in Yemen, in direct violation of its own international commitments to regulate its arms exports to states acting “illegally and repressively.”
The warnings form part of a new report on peacebuilding to coincide with Christian Aid’s Christmas peacemakers appeal and a campaign by Christian Aid supporters who are sending Christmas cards to the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, echoing the demand that the UK immediately ceases to sell arms to the Saudi-led coalition.
Sally Foster-Fulton, head of Christian Aid Scotland said: “We are heartened to see that the Scottish public is with us on this with two thirds believing these arms sales to Saudi Arabia should stop.
“It is staggering that two billion people live in countries affected by conflict, instability and violence which can only be exacerbated by the international arms trade which the UK is a major player.”
The report adds that in 2017 the world spent an estimated $1.74tn dollars on weapons and its military. That is $231 for every man, woman and child.
Last year saw the first real terms increase in global military spending since the end of the US occupation of Iraq in 2011. If the trend continues as expected this year, the figure is likely to exceed $1.8tn, the highest it has ever been.
Karol Balfe, Christian Aid’s head of violence to peace, added: “No other arms exporter comes close to this dependence on the Gulf market. In turn, this means that the Royal Saudi Air Force is hugely dependent on British-made aircraft and missiles – maintained and supported in-country by British military and civilian technicians for its own operations.”
