Dear friend,
Can you help us put more pressure on the UK government to end its support for the war in Yemen?
Thousands of people have already signed our open letter to Boris Johnson – will you add your name?
New figures published this week show that the UK government licensed arms exports worth more than £1.65 billion to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the second half of 2020.
This represents a massive 50x increase over those licensed in the six months before.
Why the change? In 2019, legal action by CAAT had forced the government to stop issuing export licences for weapons that could be used in the war in Yemen. Hundreds of millions of pounds of arms sales were put on hold.
But in July 2020 the government gave itself the all clear and resumed arms sales. It immediately began ‘clearing the backlog’ of licence applications. The government is once again sending more weapons to continue the deadly conflict in Yemen.
CAAT has launched a new legal challenge to this decision which we hope will stop these sales, and others like it, once and for all.
But political pressure is also needed now. Yemen is facing the worst famine the world has seen in decades: the UK government should focus on meeting humanitarian needs and supporting peace, not fuelling war.
Thank you for your support.
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Sarah
Campaign Against Arms Trade
P.S. Good news: MPs will hold a debate on the arms trade and Yemen next Tuesday evening. Please show your support for action to stop the arms sales ahead of the debate by supporting our Open Letter.