Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-05-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how the Government is ensuring accountability for (a) abuses of the ceasefire and (b) breaches of international law by all parties of the conflict in Yemen.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

We encourage all parties to respect the ceasefire that began on 10 April and worked closely with the UN to achieve this. The commitment of the parties to continue the work of the Coordination and De-escalation Committee, established at the talks in December, is positive and we encourage all parties to work towards a sustainable peace. We are aware of reports of alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by actors in the conflict and take these very seriously. We regularly raise the importance of compliance with International Humanitarian Law with the Saudi Arabian Government and other members of the military coalition and continue to engage with them on this. We have also raised our concerns with the Houthis on the importance of compliance with IHL.