The West’s Approach To Yemen — A Vaccination in one hand, a BOMB in the other

Jonathan M Harris
3 min readOct 23, 2017

The destruction of Yemen is a perfect example of how the international community can destroy a nation, kill thousands of its citizens, allow private companies to make £billions in profit from arms sales and without so much as a red face they can still pretend to care. The absurdity is spellbinding.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), alongside UNICEF and the caring, sharing World Bank (yes that bunch of…) have announced yet another polio immunization campaign in Yemen. It’s almost as if they have some kind of conscience.

Sounds great! But, and it’s a big BUT, earlier this month the UN, in its own words described the destruction of Yemen as an “entirely man-made catastrophe”. Now don’t get me wrong, polio is a problem and needs to be fought. But, the very fact that members of this international community can supply warplanes to Saudi Arabia, who use them to bomb the crap out the people of Yemen and then these same members of the international community can then pretend they care about what happens to the people of Yemen, is absurd.

Readers might think it cruel to accuse those supporting polio programmes of pretense. It is sad, but certainly not cruel. The money made from the misery in the shape of the arms deals etc far exceeds that which is spent on the solutions, such as polio vaccination programmes.

It’s almost as if organizations like the WHO, which are funded by the citizens of these very same armament supplying countries, exist solely to ease everyone’s conscience. Earlier this month (Oct 2017) the Saudi forces were reported to have killed and maimed nearly 700 children and bombed 38 schools and hospitals in Yemen in 2016.

The United Nations has admitted that the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen have violated the rights of children. Much of the arms and aircraft carrying out these atrocities are western made. The UK government has confirmed that UK-built warplanes have been used in Yemen.

So as citizens we pay tax to our governments, who help fund WHO programs, such as polio vaccination, in Yemen. But we also allow our governments to give arms licenses to companies in our home countries, that in turn end up killing children in Yemen.

This makes all makes little sense until you work out who benefits from this murderous situation. Is it the people of Yemen? No! Is it the citizens of countries financing the aid programmes? No! Is it the owners/shareholders of the arms dealers who make those £billions. Yes!

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Jonathan M Harris

Writer and Publisher. Formerly mainstream, now independent.