A boy and his sisters watch graffiti artists spray on a wall, commemorating the victims who were killed in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Sana’a, Yemen, May 18, 2015.

The norms of humanitarian law

This week Sir Angus Robertson posed a hard hitting pair of questions that came ever so close to holding the Prime Minister and his government to account:

Sociologists describe norms as informal understandings that govern individual’s behavior in society. International humanitarian law is a formal framework of legality . To preface ‘humanitarian law’ with ‘the norms of’ is to describe an informal understanding of a legal framework. It is not clear by the statement whose ‘norms’ are being applied, certainly Saudi Arabia’s norms of humanitarian law differ from that of the UK’s.

That “British military personnel are not directly involved in Saudi-led coalition’s operations” is a very precise choice of words; as evidenced in the PM turning to read the script before him. The word ‘directly’ would have been dropped if possible; the PM is fully aware that the UK is ‘indirectly’ involved. Whether direct or indirect, absent from the exchange is any clear picture of how involved we are, currently or relatively to previous arrangements, and what oversight is in place to scrutinize such involvement.

According to Saudi’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, “We asked a number of allied countries to come and be part of the control centre” adding “I know they [the British] are aware of the target lists.” The first statement is corroborated by the MOD’s annual reports and accounts 2012/13: “The RAF has continued to provide flying training for the Royal Saudi Air Force throughout this year.” Reports from two subsequent years describe these relationships as being ‘maintained’. Support from the RAF comes years before the Saudi led intervention in Yemen, negating any implication that Saudi support from the RAF has been provided as a result of ‘a direct threat to citizens of Britain’

For a private company to export controlled goods such as military, defense or security related goods it is required to apply for a ‘Standard individual export license’ or ‘Open individual export license’ from the government. OIEL’s do not require manufacturers to declare the total value of their goods — or the destination of their goods. The table below shows quarterly figures for military only SIEL’s granted for transactions with Saudi Arabia. For months where the value exceeds a billion pounds, figures show that over 95% of the SEIL’s are granted with a specific military license category.

Quarterly export figures for military only SIEL’s granted for transactions with Saudi Arabia

‘ML4’ refers to ‘Bombs, torpedoes, rockets, missiles, other explosive devices and charges, and related equipment and accessories’. ‘ML10’ refers to ‘Aircraft, lighter than air vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aero-engines and aircraft equipment, related good and components.’ Two things are clear from these figures; export licenses have increased phenomenally in the last two quarters and it’s not the first time this has been the case.

It is the role of the Committee on arms export to examine the licensing of arms exports and other controlled goods. In March ‘15 the committee released a report scrutinizing the governments strategic export controls from the period Jan ’13 –June’14. A recommendation expressed numerous times in the report was:

“The Committees further recommend that the Government needs to explain to Parliament and the wider public more fully why Saudi Arabia is listed by the Business Department as a Priority Market for arms exports whilst simultaneously being listed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as being a country of major human rights concern”

To paraphrase the government’s response, “A list of Priority Markets…is not incompatible with the activity of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office regarding human rights and democracy.” It is suggested the committee asks for a list of priority markets for 2015/16 accompanied by an explanation for why each country is included and whether the government will adopt a policy of explaining more fully it’s seemingly contradictory motives. This is about the extent of the committee’s powers.

Unfortunately the report is no indicator of a trajectory of increasing accountability for arms exports that can be applied to the most recent figures. The report was published on the 20th of March 2015, four days later the chair of the committee Sir John Stanley announced his retirement, instead of appointing a replacement the committee has been inactive since. Eight days after Stanley’s retirement the government reconvened its practice of mass approving arms exports. Calls to reinstate the committee have so far been ignored despite it being “needed more than ever.”

This information at best leaves us with a shallow understanding of events in Yemen and the UK’s complicity in Saudi operations in the region, operations that by many accounts have breached humanitarian law. Most recently Saudia Arabia has been suspected of bombing a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in Yemen, killing at least four people. What is evident from these findings is a government who fails to see an independent watchdog for arms exports as a necessity, a Prime Minister who is happy to support ‘norms’ of humanitarian law and a British people whose so-called safety is the false justification for the approval billions of pounds worth of arms exports to a country with an appalling human rights record.