From: Ann Jones
Columbus
After six years of complicity in a terrible human tragedy, the U.S. has an obligation to end all support for the destabilizing and destructive military intervention and deadly blockade on Yemen, and start acting as a positive force for peace.
To start, President Biden should cancel $36.5 billion in pending weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, ban future weapons transfers to these countries until their human rights records improve, and provide reparations for the United States’ destabilizing drone bombing campaign and other war crimes in Yemen.
The U.S. should push Saudi Arabia and the UAE to announce a nationwide ceasefire, an end to its deadly air and sea blockade, and work with the UN to expand Yemen’s peace process to center the demands of the people most vested in sustainable peace and focus on tangible accountability for all violations by all parties to the conflict.
Finally, the U.S. should massively invest in humanitarian relief and peacebuilding, in addition to reparations for the damage it has caused, and push for accountability and transformative justice for the ongoing abuses by all parties to the conflict.
The Biden administration is trying to shield Saudi Arabia and the UAE from accountability by potentially only banning some weapons. That’s not centering human rights in U.S. foreign policy, and the president must choose the path of peace, justice, and diplomacy.
