Europe Complicit in Yemen Humanitarian Disaster by Selling Arms to Saudi Arabia, UAE

By Staff, Agencies

A member of the European Parliament denounced Europe’s support for the ongoing Saudi-led military onslaught on Yemen, arguing that EU nations have done little to condemn the attacks and deal with the humanitarian catastrophe there.

“We are complicit in this humanitarian disaster,” independent Irish politician Mick Wallace wrote in a post published on his official Twitter page on Wednesday.

He also railed against European countries for their arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, stating that the Saudi-led coalition has put millions of people in Yemen at risk of starvation.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE deliberately starve millions in Yemen - and the EU can't even stop its Member States from arming them,” Wallace said.

The MEP also censured the United Nations over last June’s decision to remove the Saudi-led military alliance from a blacklist for killing and injuring children in Yemen, saying more than 100,000 children have lost their lives in the conflict-plagued Arab country.

Earlier last month, Yemeni officials raised the alarm about a deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe because of the Saudi-led military campaign and tight blockade against the crisis-hit country, saying that “a child dies every 10 minutes” in Yemen.

The Yemeni Health Ministry issued the warning on December 1, noting that shortfalls in aid funding were aggravating the humanitarian situation there.

According to the United Nations, acute malnutrition rates among Yemeni children under five are the highest ever recorded.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah revolutionary movement.

The Ansarullah, backed by the Yemeni armed forces and allied popular groups, has been successfully defending Yemen against the Saudi aggression, leaving Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the county.

Former US president Donald Trump had long overlooked and defended the Saudi-led coalition’s acts of aggression in Yemen in favor of lucrative arms sales to the regime in Riyadh.

His successor, Joe Biden, has pledged to “end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.”