As we went to press, the war in Yemen seemed to be heating up, with Houthis claiming a missile strike on an oil facility in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has been leading a military coalition in Yemen since 2015, fighting against Houthi rebel forces.
Britain has licensed saless of over £5bn-worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since March 2015. At the end of October, Campaign Against Arms Trade launched a new judicial review into whether it was legal for the British government to restart arms sales to Saudi Arabia in July.
According to the Yemen Data Project, airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition have killed over 8,700 civilians.
Save the Children said on 16 November that ‘the number of child casualties caused by airstrikes has increased five-fold since June as compared with the previous quarter.’
The war has led Yemen to the brink of famine, with two-thirds of the population hungry and nearly 1.5 million families relying entirely on food aid to survive.
UN technical experts warned again in mid-November of a possible environmental disaster from an abandoned oil tanker, just off the coast of Yemen.
Despite a UN ceasefire agreed in 2018, fighting has continued in and around Hodeidah, with an upsurge in October.