Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina's fracking dream

The roar of the burning gas well could be heard almost a mile and a half away, from atop the high plateau where Albino Campo Maripe stood, looking down at the orange flames lapping the earth in the distance.

When he was a child, the 60-year-old Mapuche chief used to ride there bareback. Those days are gone forever. The once-pristine landscape is now dotted with fracking wells and the white patches of land cleared for even more.

The panoramic view is nonetheless overpowering. Two crystal-blue lakes, whose far shores blend with the horizon, cling to the edge of an arid and wind-buffeted Martian landscape of red sandstone, rugged promontories and wide beaches.

The ancient and spectacular rock formations of Neuquén province in Argentina’s Patagonia region are a paleontologist’s dream, rich with dinosaur fossils. But the image quickly fades to the sight and sound of the fracking well that exploded on 14 September and burned continuously for 24 days, spewing hot gas and other elements into the air from nearly two miles below ground.

The raging fire was finally put out on Monday by a team of experts who flew from Houston with 56 tons of special equipment. “This shouldn’t be happening,” Campo Maripe said, “but these are the consequences of fracking.”

Fracking accidents happen regularly in Vaca Muerta (Dead Cow in Spanish), one of the world’s largest shale oil and gas reservoirs. In 2018 alone, there were an estimated 934 incidents at 95 wells.

There have been leaks from drilling sites, and claims from local people of water pollution and increased ill health affecting them and their livestock.

For Argentina’s leaders there is a bigger picture. They believe the shale reservoir can rescue the country from its ongoing economic crises.

“This province will transform us into a world power,” the president, Mauricio Macri, said on Tuesday to a crowd of 3,000 people in Neuquén, referring to the nearly 2,000 fracking wells that have been drilled there since the discovery of the deposits was announced in 2011.

Twenty companies own a total of 36 concessions in Vaca Muerta, covering a combined area of about 8,500 sq km (3,300 sq miles).

The Argentine oil company YPF leads the pack with 23 areas, of which 16 are operational, in partnership with the US firm Chevron.

For the environmentalist Maristella Svampa, the promise that Vaca Muerta could turn Argentina into a new Saudi Arabia is a myth, like that of El Dorado, the city of gold the Spanish conquistadors searched for in South America. “It’s the magical illusion of sudden wealth,” she said.

Neuquén’s indigenous Mapuche people claim Vaca Muerta has brought them not wealth, but discrimination, dispossession and health problems.

The Campo Maripe community, comprising about 125 people among 35 families, is one of more than 40 Mapuche communities in Neuquén.

“When we went to school the other students would yell: ‘Here come the Indians,’” says Mabel Campo Maripe, 52, who shares community chief duties with her brother Albino. “Those same people today refuse to accept we are Mapuches because that would give us a right to our land.”

They say the denial of their cultural identity is being used by the Neuquén authorities to refuse the Campo Maripe community legal rights over the Loma Campana plateau, where they say they have grazed their cattle and goats for nearly a century. Pockmarked with close to 500 fracking wells that have sprung up in the past seven years, the plateau is the centre of the fracking boom.

Summer temperatures reach 40C (104F); in winter they dip to -14C. There are no trees, only sparse shrubs that provide subsistence pasture for the cattle and goats of the Campo Maripe community.

“The oil companies entered our land without our permission,” claims the elder Campo Maripe. The fracking wells took a quick toll on their animals, he says. “We had goats born without jaws, without mouths.”

In 2014, the community began blocking the access road used by oil company trucks to reach the Loma Campana plateau. “First we blocked the road for two weeks, then for 48 days and then again for another 48 days,” says Campo Maripe.

They occupied fracking towers and even the YPF offices in the capital city of Neuquén. Finally, an agreement was reached for a special committee, consisting of government and Mapuche-appointed experts, to determine the community’s claim on about 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) in and around Loma Campana.

“We were able to determine that the Campo Maripe clan has occupied the land continually since at least 1927, when they started paying pasture rights to the national government,” said Jorgelina Villarreal, an anthropologist who formed part of the committee. “We found government records, even an army map, that show they were the first recorded settlers of Loma Campana.”

But in 2015, the authorities refused to accept the committee’s findings. The then governor Jorge Sapag said the report failed to prove the community had inhabited the area in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and therefore their claim to the plateau was invalid. He said: “The plateau belongs to the province.”

Villareal said: “His reasoning is ridiculous. Argentina didn’t even exist in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the Mapuches were already here.” The authorities offered the clan the title deed to a mere 700 hectares. The offer was refused.

Oil companies say they are trying to work with the indigenous communities but YPF pointed to the 2015 ruling and reiterated: “Campo Maripe has never inhabited the extensive land they are claiming for.”

A spokesman said: “Their houses and cultural or productive activities are several kilometres away from YPF and Chevron’s operations. Nevertheless, the community still claims they should have rights on the lands where YPF and Chevron operate.”

The oil companies say their work does not contaminate water sources because it occurs 3,000 metres (9,850ft) below ground, while the water tables are at a depth of only 200 metres.

But Campo Maripe claims the problem is not seepage from below, but from above. “They drilled about 400 wells contaminating everything. They dug pits next to the wells where they dumped the waste without any treatment and threw limestone on it to cover it up. We lost our best land.”

Albino, Mabel and other family members say they have suffered a multitude of health problems since the fracking began.

“One of our sisters and her husband died of cancer in 2017,” says Mabel. “The fracking has affected our bones, which become decalcified. I had to have a titanium spine implant; another sister also needs one. Albino had an operation on his arm because of bone loss.”

Both siblings claim doctors have privately told them the cause is contamination from the wells. “They are scared to talk,” says Mabel. She says one worried doctor asked her: “Are you recording me?”

“Last year, the grandson of another sister was born with his intestines outside his body. They had to operate [on] him to put them in,” says Mabel.

Then there are the permanent headaches, and the smell. On hot, windy days the fields smell like a petrol station.

The Guardian asked YPF about the fears of contamination and possible health impacts, including claims of cancer, respiratory ailments and skin lesions. It denied there was a problem.

“At YPF we are committed to operate with the highest standards. Operational excellence is key and we work permanently to improve and implement solutions that minimise the potential impacts that our activity could generate,” it said. “In the special case of Loma Campana, the area we develop in partnership with Chevron, no incidents of any kind have been recorded since the beginning of operations in 2013.”

The arrival of waste disposal contractors has brought a separate set of problems. A Greenpeace team took samples from the open-air waste pits on Loma Campana and released the results to the Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén, which last October opened a lawsuit against the Treater waste disposal plant, alleging that Treater had handled waste for many of the fossil fuel companies mining in the area.

“We are concerned about leakage from the waste pits into the ground as well as by the wind carrying volatile particles into the air from the mountains of waste above the pools,” says Natalia Machain, executive director of Greenpeace Argentina, which joined the lawsuit as plaintiff this year.

Treater has denied any contamination. “We are not a waste dump. We are an environmental services company that treats waste from the oil industry.”

But the Neuquén legislator Santiago Nogueira is pressing for waste management laws because, he says, “the province does not have enough capacity to process the amount of waste generated by Vaca Muerta”.

Treater is only one of many open-air waste pits dotted across Vaca Muerta. A large mound rises above the Comarsa waste plant about 4 miles (6km) outside Neuquén. Closed by the authorities because of its proximity to a large urban area, the plant no longer receives waste, but bulldozers are constantly at work turning over the mounds of earth on its grounds.

Sections of the cement containment wall around the plant have collapsed.

“There are over 300,000 cubic metres of waste still piled at Comarsa,” said Nogueira. “The whole waste treatment system is insufficient.”

Vaca Muerta has yet to prove its economic viability. Experts say the government’s expectations are hampered by the high cost of fracking in Argentina and the lack of adequate gas transport and waste disposal infrastructure, aggravated by a shaky economy.

The country has spent billions of dollars in direct handouts to lure

investors. “Oil companies aren’t extracting hydrocarbons from Vaca Muerta. They’re extracting subsidies,” says Enrique Viale, an environmental lawyer and anti-fracking campaigner.

The subsidies are ultimately unaffordable for Argentina, according to a report released in March by the Cleveland-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

In January the International Monetary Fund, which had put together a $57bn bailout for Argentina in 2018, demanded a trimming of the subsidies. The industry responded with layoffs, the threat of lawsuits against the government and production cuts. “The abrupt reduction in Argentina’s production subsidy programme … is shaking investor confidence,” the report states.

However grim the outlook for the oil and gas companies, it is the Mapuche indigenous people who are bearing the highest cost for Argentina’s dream of a fracking bonanza.

“As Mapuches, we’re not fighting for just ourselves or our community,” says Albino Campo Maripe. “We want our children and grandchildren to know that we fought for something that belongs to everyone. Water is life. Every plant is life. The greed of governments is killing the world. The world is not going to end. We are going to end, because we’re killing ourselves.”

Article by Uki Goñi 

Barbaric Decisions: Coronavirus, Refusing Bail and Julian Assange

“To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary. This is not justice, it is a barbaric decision.”- Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, March 26, 2020

Social distancing is not a word that seems to have reached certain parts of the British legal system.  Granted, it is an odd one, best refashioned as an anti-social act for the sake of preservation.  Marooned in some state of legal obliviousness, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had little time for the bail application made by counsel for Julian Assange.  The WikiLeaks publisher had again rubbed the judicial person the wrong way.  Her memory was not unfazed: Assange had absconded in 2012 and had blotted his copy book.  He would not be permitted to it again.

Not that the application was unsound.  The central ground was the safety of the publisher, whose health has been assailed by seven years of confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, followed by his incarceration at the high security facility at Belmarsh.  Prisons, featuring high concentrations of people, have become fertile grounds for spreading COVID-19.  The March 17 report by Richard Coker, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, cautioned on how the transmission of the virus in “congregate settings” typified by “poor sanitation, poor ventilation, and overcrowding” could lead to overwhelming “a population, particularly a population with co-morbidities or that is elderly.”  Coker was unequivocal in recommending that unnecessary detention regimes should be eased.  “This should be done before the virus has chance to enter a detention centre.”  

Representatives of the UK penal system have shown varying degrees of concern.  There have even been calls for early release or means by which prison is avoided as a form of punishment altogether.  The UK Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene executively to reduce numbers.  The head of the Prison Governors Association Andrea Albutt has warned about the dangers posed by current detention arrangements.  “We’ve lots of prisoners, two people in a cell built for one”, citing Swansea as an example where 80 percent of prisoners were doubled up.  “We have that all across the country.”  Far better, she suggested, to reduce the population.  Such a measure “helps stabilise prisons”, “calm prisoners”, and reduce the staff to prisoner ratio. “If we have less prisoners doubled [up in cells], it will be easier to isolate those who’ve been confirmed as having the virus or have the symptoms so we can delay the spread.”  

Those standing by current UK prison guidelines remain defiantly confident that enough is being done.  The Ministry of Justice is convinced that “robust contingency plans” have been put in place prioritising “the safety of staff, prisoners and visitors.”  Procedures dealing with managing “the outbreak of infectious diseases and prisons” were already in place, and were being used to identify COVID-19 cases.  Sanitising facilities such as hand washing “are available to prisoners, staff and visitors and we have worked closely with suppliers to ensure the supply of soap and cleaning materials.” 

The ministry remains unclear on how the principle of social distancing, one seemingly anathema to the penal system, has been applied.  For her part, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, considers such measures in crowded, unhygienic facilities “practically impossible”.  Undeterred by such observations, the MOJ merely refers to a temporary suspension of “the usual regime”, meaning that “prisoners can no longer take part in usual recreational activities such as using the gym, going to worship or visiting the library.”  Nor can prisoners receive visits.  Such measures are bound to cause ripples of dissatisfaction.

Not much of this impressed the judicial consciousness.  Assange’s legal team were valiant in their efforts to state the obvious.  These were proceedings taking place on the third day of the country’s coronavirus lockdown.  Edward Fitzgerald QC, sporting a facemask, insisted that, “These [medical] experts consider that he is particularly at risk of developing coronavirus and, if he does, that it develops into very severe complications for him…  If he does develop critical symptoms it would be very doubtful that Belmarsh would be able to cope with his condition.”  Prisons were “epidemiological pumps”, fertile grounds for the transmission of disease, and Assange’s continued detention posed endangering circumstances “from which he cannot escape.”  

Baraitser remained unconvinced.  She was satisfied that there were no instances of COVID-19 at Belmarsh, a very cavalier assessment given that a hundred staff personnel were in self-isolation.  She was more moved by the submission from Clair Dobbin, representing the US government, that Assange posed a high risk of absconding.  Granting bail to him posed “insurmountable hurdles”.  Fitzgerald’s response, to no avail, was to focus the matter on Assange’s survival, not absconsion.   

Judge Baraitser has shown a certain meanness through these case management and extradition proceedings.  In the Wednesday hearing at the Westminster Magistrate’s Court, things had not improved.  “As matters stand today, this global pandemic does not as of itself provide grounds for Mr Assange’s release.”  These were words uttered on the same day that 19 prisoners in 10 prisons in the UK had tested positive for COVID-19.     

The ruling angered Doctors for Assange, comprising a list of some 200 physicians scattered across the globe.  “Despite our prior unequivocal statement that Mr Assange is at increased risk of serious illness and death were he to contract coronavirus and the evidence of medical experts,” their March 27 statement reads, “Baraitser dismissed the risk, citing UK guidelines for prisons in responding to the global pandemic.”  The group cited Baraister’s own solemn words deferring to the wisdom of the UK prison authorities.  “I have no reason not to trust this advice as both evidence-based and reliable and appropriate.” 

The medical practitioners took firm issue with the steadfast refusal of the judge to accept the medical side of the equation.  Not only was he at “increased risk of contracting and dying from the novel disease coronavirus (COVID-19)”, declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, he was also more vulnerable because of the torments of psychological torture and a “history of medical neglect … fragile health, and chronic lung disease.”

The pattern of rejection and denial has been a consistent feature in Baraitser’s rulings regarding Assange’s case.  When his legal team sought to liberate their client from the glass case in court for reasons of advice and consultation, the judge refused.  She even refused to accept the reasoning of the prosecutor James Lewis QC, who suggested that letting Assange sit with his legal team was an uncomplicated matter.  Her reasoning: To let Assange leave his glassed perch would be, effectively, an application for bail and mean he had escaped the court’s custody.  True to form on Wednesday, Assange, present via videolink, had his connection terminated after an hour.  This prevented him from hearing the defence summation and the concluding remarks of the judge.  The despoiling of justice, even in the face of a pandemic, remains an unwavering aspect of Assange’s fate.  

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research, 2020

Covid-19 and the Rohingya refugee crisis

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh – All around the world, the numbers are climbing. Each day registers thousands of new cases and lives lost. In Europe, now the epicenter of the pandemic, governments know that the worst is yet to come and are implementing increasingly restrictive measures to enforce social distancing and isolation.

In Cox’s Bazar we have been watching the world and holding our breath for the first confirmed case of Covid-19. With reports of the first confirmed case in the local community in Cox’s Bazar, it’s just a matter of time until the virus reaches the vulnerable population living in cramped conditions in the largest refugee settlement on Earth. Thousands of people could die.  

One million Rohingya refugees, half of whom are children, have been sheltering in sprawling camps in Cox’s Bazar since August 2017 when they were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar in the face of horrific violence. For almost three years, Rohingya refugees have been telling us they want to go home and resume normal life. They want their children to go to school and for families separated by the conflict to be reunited.

So far, international attempts to hold Myanmar accountable for alleged crimes against the Rohingya and improve conditions in Rakhine state have failed spectacularly. In short, it will be years until the Rohingya see justice.  

As global life grinds to a halt in a bid to contain the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, we must remember that for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, their lives have already been in limbo for years; it is their status quo, and it will not end with the containment of this virus. 

If there is one lesson for refugees that we must take away from this crisis, it is that refugee camps, and a life in limbo, should never be considered an acceptable long-term solution. We must challenge perceptions that because the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar escaped Myanmar with their lives, they are safe. The Covid-19 pandemic is a warning to us that there is not endless time to resolve the issues in Myanmar that would finally allow the Rohingya to return home. While the people and government of Bangladesh have generously continued to shelter the Rohingya for years, life in the camps is not safe. 

Children, in particular girls, are at a high risk of exploitation, violence and trafficking. Rohingya refugees do not have access to livelihood opportunities to help them support their families. 

We are now witnessing the impact that Covid-19 is having in communities that can “social-distance,” wash hands and have access to strong health-care systems, yet this virus has still brought them to their knees. In the densely packed camps of Cox’s Bazar, options of social distancing or self-isolation are remote, with many refugees living in cramped conditions in makeshift shelters made of bamboo and tarpaulin. Even simple hygiene practices such as regular hand washing become complicated feats of logistical planning when access to clean water is severely limited. 

The government of Bangladesh and humanitarian agencies have sprung into action. Rohingya refugees are included in the government’s national plan to respond to Covid-19, and food distribution agencies are developing new methods that minimize close person-to-person contact.

Rohingya volunteers are mobilizing throughout the camps to spread hygiene and prevention messaging that will protect their families and loved ones. Volunteers from the host community are being trained too, supporting everything from delivering awareness trainings to implementing referral mechanisms and medical treatment.

The humanitarian agencies in Cox’s Bazar have already stripped back to essential-only services like health care and food distribution. This is a necessary step to ensure we are reducing the chances of transmission and minimizing the impact of this disease on the Rohingya community, but this decision too will come at a cost.

Just two months ago the Bangladeshi government approved the use of the Myanmar school curriculum in the camps, but children’s education will now have to be suspended to contain Covid-19. Our child-friendly spaces are closed and may be repurposed for medical use if the need arises. Rohingya children are now not only at risk of Covid-19 but will have to face this challenge without access to their regular support systems or safe spaces to play. 

We will do whatever we can to work with the government of Bangladesh and Rohingya refugees to protect them from Covid-19. But the fact remains, Rohingya children should not be living in these camps. They should not have to fight a global pandemic with the bare minimum needed to survive. They should be at home, at school; playing and learning.

At a time when there are more displaced people around the world than ever before, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed how our systems fail the most vulnerable. Our global mechanisms for accountability and the protection of human rights have failed the Rohingya so far – it is absolutely essential that we do not fail them again.

This is a global pandemic, and the virus is now hitting the most vulnerable communities.  We must come together. Only a global response will stop the spread of the virus everywhere. This means the international community must step up to offer medical support and testing kits, share data and provide much-needed funding to support the response.

But stepping up also means so much more than that. When the dust settles, when planes start flying again and the borders reopen, we cannot go back to “business as usual,” we cannot assume we have endless time to resolve this crisis, that Rohingya children can wait. Rohingya children must be afforded a future of hope and opportunity, like every child deserves.

We may not have the power to safeguard against another pandemic. But we do have the power to ensure it isn’t the most vulnerable that end up paying the heaviest price. 

By ATHENA RAYBURN

Coronavirus exposes once again the effects of the Israeli blockade on Gaza’s healthcare

The announcement of the first two positive cases of COVID-19 in Gaza on March 22, Sunday, has rightly set off alarms, particularly among health officials and international health organizations. The two Palestinian men detected with the Coronavirus infection had recently traveled to Pakistan and have since been placed in a quarantine facility near the Egyptian border with Gaza. The two individuals were also not allowed to mix with the wider population of Gaza. The Palestinian territory has been under a debilitating blockade since 2006, imposed by both Israel and Egypt.

Following news of the two cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) immediately dispatched its officials to Gaza to take stock of the situation. The Hamas-administered territory has also taken precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus, such as the closure of all restaurants, cafes, wedding and reception halls, as well as a ban on large gatherings, especially during funerals. Friday prayers at mosques are suspended until further notice and weekly markets in the cities of the Gaza strip have also been stopped. 

WHO has supplied Gaza with hundreds of Coronavirus test kits and personal protective equipment. It has also promised the supply of additional necessary medical equipment in the near future. However, both the WHO and the United Nations (UN) have repeatedly called for urgent international assistance required to prevent a major outbreak and for the supply of medical aid to the besieged Gaza strip. The UN estimated that the urgent requirement to meet the humanitarian needs of the civilian population is around $7 million dollars.

Fears of a deadly outbreak in Gaza had been growing, with extremely frail and insufficient healthcare infrastructure catering to a population of close to two million. The healthcare system has not only suffered due to the brutal Israeli-Egyptian blockade of close to 14 years, but has also undergone destruction and massive setbacks during the three Israeli invasions of Gaza, in 2008-09, 2012 and 2014. The resulting destruction of many of Gaza’s hospitals and related infrastructure has made it difficult even under normal circumstances for Gazans to access adequate healthcare. It now makes Palestinians in Gaza especially vulnerable to the Coronavirus.

Another major issue is the shortage of essential and life-saving medical equipment and medicines, mainly due to Israeli restrictions on the movement of goods through the Israel-Gaza border. This is compounded by the restrictions on the Gaza-Egypt border imposed by the Egyptian dictatorial regime of Abdel Fateh el-Sisi. 

Sources from the Palestinian health ministry recently confirmed a massive shortage of ventilators and intensive care unit (ICU) beds in Gaza. The current count of 56 ventilators and 40 ICU beds can at most be increased to 100 beds for dealing with emergency situations. The Gaza strip also suffers from low electricity supply, averaging between 4-6 hours per day, because Israel has destroyed its power plants and due to the lack of an adequate fuel supply to keep generators running at hospitals for medical treatment. Electricity is of utmost importance especially for critical patients, emergency surgeries, and life-threatening conditions or ailments.

WHO and the UN have both raised these concerns and called for the state of Israel to immediately lift the air, sea and land blockade on Gaza to help avert a catastrophic human disaster. The territory also faces a shortage of qualified doctors, besides lacking vital supplies of necessary medical equipment such as disinfectant sprays, testing kits, protective masks and suits that can help control the spread of the virus.

Several international human rights and health organizations have strongly urged Israel to end its blockade and lift the restrictions on the movement of people and goods to and from Gaza, so as to facilitate the supply of medical items and to make available the necessary number of doctors required to cater to its two million residents. They have also called upon the Israeli health ministry to provide medical and humanitarian assistance to Gaza. Under international law, Israel is obligated to help the health ministry in Gaza to treat and control the potential outbreak.

The violent repression against the Great March of Return protests that Palestinians have been staging since March 2018 has also added burden on Gaza’s already under-pressure hospitals and medical centers. The number of injuries inflicted by Israel forces through live and rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas canisters, water cannons on Palestinian protesters have strained the hospitals and medical personnel. Around 25,000 injured men, women and children, have filled the hospitals, many overcrowded beyond their capacity, with patients lying on stretchers in the corridors and outside the hospital buildings, awaiting treatment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 27,000 people worldwide and infected more than 600,000. A large-scale outbreak in Gaza will spell doom for the extremely vulnerable civilian population which is already living on the edge of human survival. To help mitigate the impending crisis, Israel must immediately lift its siege on Gaza. The international community and organizations such as WHO, UN, along with other medical relief organizations, must also assist the people of Gaza to prevent the spread of the deadly virus in the occupied Palestinian territory. 

Article by Abhijan Choudhury

After 5 years of war in Yemen, American complicity must end

March 25 marks the fifth anniversary of the brutal war in Yemen. Code-named Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led coalition’s offensive operations began with airstrikes and a naval blockade against the Houthi rebels with a goal of restoring Yemen’s ousted government. With early and generous American military support to the Saudi-led coalition, this war has created the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. And things could easily get even worse.

The coronavirus has recently begun to spread from Iran into the greater Middle East. Yemen’s dilapidated health infrastructure and frail population – at greater risk due to years of hunger, disease, and displacement from violent conflict - has world health experts worried about a disaster scenario when the virus inevitably arrives and takes root.

On this heartbreaking 5th anniversary of the war, the United States must end the obstruction of humanitarian assistance, press for a nationwide ceasefire, and support a diplomatic settlement to the war.

After five years of war, roughly 14 million people are at risk of famine and over 24 million people rely on food assistance for survival. Aid agencies have described Yemen as the worst place on earth to be a child, with the conflict claiming the lives of at least 85,000 under the age of five. More than 2 million people have been infected with cholera, while an alarming dengue and influenza epidemic is gripping the country. The Saudi-led coalition’s blockade has impeded the flow of food, fuel, and medicine, which has threatened the lives of millions. And our decision to suspend all humanitarian aid (due to reports that some aid was being diverted) is not morally sustainable in light of the added urgency of coronavirus.

Our Constitution is designed to let the people - through their elected representatives - decide whether and when our nation goes to war. This ensures such decisions are not taken lightly and, in theory, that we don’t get bogged down in endless wars. Congress has not authorized military action in Yemen, and therefore should not permit funds to be used in support of the fighting.

It is no coincidence that the Stockholm Agreement - paving the way for a ceasefire in the port city of Hodeida - was signed the same day Congress passed legislation to end military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Following the ceasefire, Congress forced more Yemen war votes, helping push the UAE to draw down its forces in Yemen, spur a reduction in cross border attacks by the Saudis and Houthis, and revive negotiations between the warring parties.

In 2019, there was a major reduction in cross border violence between Saudis and the Houthis, due in part to congressional action. But after congressional negotiators dropped provisions to end military assistance to the Saudis, Yemen suffered a breakdown in diplomacy and an uptick in violence. Between December 2019 and January 2020, the total number of Saudi air raids jumped 294 percent. By February, air raids were up another 118 percent.

Last September, the UN released a report indicating that by providing military aid, intelligence sharing, logistical support, and weapons to the Saudi-led war in Yemen, the U.S. may be complicit in war crimes. The report documents horrific violations of international law, including airstrikes targeting civilian and agricultural infrastructure, arbitrary killings, torture, detention, and sexual violence against women.

After five years of unimaginable human suffering, Yemen can’t wait any longer. Congress must renew its efforts to end military support for the war. By forcing more votes to prohibit unauthorized military support and weapon sales, Congress can pressure the warring parties to sit at the bargaining table and bring this devastating war to an end.

Article by HASSAN EL-TAYYAB