South Africa is putting profit before Yemeni lives

The South African state has abandoned its commitment to human rights to profit from weapons deals.

Democratic South Africa’s commitment to human rights has never been solely inward-looking. Its constitutional order was crafted with a deep awareness of the South African apartheid state’s complicity in human rights violations in other countries, as well as a recognition that the crime of apartheid itself was enabled and supported by the regime’s corporate and state allies around the world. In this context, Democratic South Africa committed itself to fulfilling the human rights of people in the country, while also “championing the values of human rights [and] democracy” around the world. Yet, faced with the world’s worst contemporary humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the South African state has abandoned this commitment to human rights in exchange for the chance to profit from weapons deals. In so doing, it has become complicit in war crimes in Yemen. Since 2015, Yemen has been the epicentre of a complex and regionalised civil war. Thousands of combatants have been killed and, according to United Nations reports, civilians have also been deliberately targeted in the brutal conflict, in violation of international law. The aerial and ground bombing of vital infrastructure, as well as endless blockades of goods and aid, has resulted in up to 16 million Yemenis having inadequate access to food and up to 18 million having no access to safe water. This suffering is now being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While all parties to the conflict are implicated in numerous violations of international humanitarian law, the evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have repeatedly targeted civilians with both air and ground attacks. The UN has also expressed concern that the Saudi Arabia-led coalition is using starvation as a tactic in the war, in violation of international law.