English: A Woman in Black protester in central London hands out leaflets highlighting Britain's arms exports to Saudi Arabia and how they "fuel the conflict" and humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

The leaflet points out how British manufactured Typhoon and Tornado aircraft as well as weaponry and bombs have "been deployed on combat missions in the Yemen campaign" and how the British are even training the Saudi Air Force.

Surveys conducted by the Yemen Data Project, a group of academics, human rights and national security experts, showed that as of 2016 at least one third of all Saudi air strikes had hit civilian targets with the United Nations estimating in 2017 that 5,000 civilians had been killed by the Saudi bombing. The predictable indirect consequences of the bombing however have been even more catastrophic.

Britain continues to be complicit in one of the worst war crimes of the twenty first century by supplying the aircraft and weapons and the diplomatic support for Saudi Arabia's three year bombing campaign. This together with a tight blockade on basic imports of food, fuel and other essentials has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis with 76% of the population in need of humanitarian aid and 8.4 million at risk of famine, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. Additionally, over one million Yemenis have now contracted cholera while a recent outbreak of diphtheria is spreading rapidly.

While British media outlets focus on alleged Iranian violations of the arms embargo on Yemen, there is a deafening silence on the devastating role played by British aircraft and weapons, with the government granting arms export licenses worth £1.12 billion to Saudi Arabia during 2017 alone.

Women in Black, which is a global movement for justice and against militarism, held a vigil against British military support for the Saudi assault on Yemen on Wednesday evening, 31 January 2018, as part of a series of protests against the arms trade. Over the last seventeen years the movement has involved 10,000 women in protests, vigils and other non-violent actions while campaigning for global peace and justice.

For more information on the Women in Black worldwide network please visit their website

<a href="http://womeninblack.org/about-women-in-black/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">womeninblack.org/about-women-in-black/</a>

Please note that I am entirely responsible for this write up and only the very short extract within inverted commas is taken from their leaflet. The rest of the article is based on data from the United Nations, the Yemen Data Project and media reports.