Hilary Benn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Hilary Benn on 2016-02-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether he raised the alleged breaches of international humanitarian law outlined in the final report of the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen with the Saudi Arabian government during his recent visit to Rome.

Mr Philip Hammond

We regularly raise the importance of compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) with the Saudi government and other members of the military coalition. I raised the issue of IHL compliance on my recent trip to Rome where I had a bilateral meeting with my Saudi Arabian counterpart Adel Al-Jubeir. The Saudis have their own internal procedures for investigations and they announced more detail of how they investigate such incidents on 31 January.