Challenging UK weapons sales to Saudi Arabia

 

GLAN and Mwatana filed a request to appeal High Court judgment green-lighting UK government weapons licensing to Saudi Arabia despite evidence of serious violations of international law. 

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Status: The application for permission to appeal was unfortunately refused by the court in February 2024.

 

Case information

 

With GLAN’s assistance, Mwatana for Human Rights filed a request to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales to appeal against last month’s judgment from the High Court on arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The High Court upheld UK government licensing of weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen despite Mwatana and partners, Campaign Against Arms Trade, having provided extensive evidence of patterns of unlawful airstrikes causing grave civilian harm which we argue legally requires the government to halt all licences.  

 

The UK has licensed at least £8.2 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia since it intervened in Yemen’s catastrophic civil war in 2015. Airstrikes by the Saud/UAE-led Coalition have killed thousands of civilians and have contributed to what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In making a decision to license weapons sales, the government was required to assess whether there are patterns of concern in the Coalition’s past airstrikes. The government adopted an untenable and illogical methodology to do this, which wrongly filtered out the vast majority of airstrikes as either not “credible” or incapable of being a “possible” violation - despite substantial evidence to the contrary. The government’s ultimate risk assessment was therefore conducted on a number of airstrikes that was so small and unrepresentative of reality as to be worthless as an exercise. In reaching its conclusions, the government relied on as “independent” a Coalition accountability body that has been shown to be a sham by human rights organisations including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Mwatana.  

 

Mwatana further argues in its filing to the Court of Appeal that the High Court was wrong in law in endorsing the government’s position that the violations by the Saudi/UAE-led Coalition were “well within the margin of error” to be expected in this type of conflict - there is no such “permissible margin” in law for committing violations of international humanitarian law. The methodology defeats the purpose of the required assessment of what unlawful harm the Yemeni people have already suffered and what further harm they will suffer if these arms sales are allowed to continue.  

 

Radhya al Mutawakel, Chairperson of Mwatana, said:  "Wherever there is law, there should be justice. By this appeal and by the law of the United Kingdom, Mwatana is emphasizing for the world that none of the included incidents is an isolated incident, but all included incidents are patterns of violation against civilians in Yemen." 

 

Dearbhla Minogue, solicitor for Mwatana and Senior Lawyer at GLAN, said: “The High Court has heaped praise on the government for its licensing processes, despite the fact that the Saudi-Emirati led coalition has conducted airstrikes that have taken scores of lives. We are taking the government back to court and look forward to this wrong being righted on appeal.”   

Update: Hearing on UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia

The UK Government will be in the High Court on 31st January 2023 defending its decision to continue the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia. The action is being taken by the campaigning organisation Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) will be there as our team is assisting Yemeni human rights organisation Mwatana for Human Rights to intervene in the case and provide the High Court with extensive evidence of violations of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes.