The UK is profiting from war

As the bombardment intensifies in Gaza, so do the flow of Western weapons to Israel.  UK arms sales reached a record high last year with £8.5 billion in export licenses.  

The UK have consistently approved sale of lethal weapons to the Israeli Defence Force and have promised major support for Israel’s decimation of Gaza in recent days.

Israel is unleashing the heaviest and most indiscriminate aerial bombardment Gaza has ever seen, killing civilians at a rate of hundreds per day. Israel has also ordered the forced displacement of over 1 million civilians from northern Gaza; the UN stated this transfer will have “devastating humanitarian consequences” and could amount to the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.

This needs to end.  

We are urgently raising funds to challenge the government decisions that allow these British arms to be sold to the Israeli Defence Force and other major war aggressors.

UK Government licensing laws allow British weapons to be sold to groups actively engaging in warfare.  These weapons are being sold to launch indiscriminate attacks on residential buildings, to bomb weddings and funerals and to violently oppress basic human rights. 

In our latest challenge against UK arms sales, we are calling on the government to halt all UK arms sales to Israel over illegal attacks on civilians, forced displacement, and policies in Palestine.

In the UK, all arms sales are made under licenses issued by the Secretary of State for International Trade who, according to the law, must not allow arms sales if there if there is a risk those weapons would be used to unlawfully harm civilians.  We have uncovered a catalogue of damning evidence of evidence proving British supplied weapons are being used to kill and harass civilians.   

We are working on a coordinated legal strategy challenging the UK through cases where arms have been sold to brutal militaries who flagrantly violate international law with impunity. We have already shown the court that British weapons are being used by Saudi Arabia to commit war crimes in Yemen. We are appealing the court’s declaration that, despite this evidence, UK weapons can continue to be sold to Saudi Arabia. 

Stand with us to show the UK government that we will not stand by and continue to watch them profit from war.  

About Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) 

GLAN pursues innovative legal actions across borders to challenge powerful actors involved in systemic human rights violations. We use the law to challenge powerful actors who use violate human rights during war for economic gains. 

GLAN's lawyers have been consistently using litigation for accountability for the worst atrocity crimes. We have done this through pioneering the use of open source evidence in Ukraine, pressurising the U.K. authorities to stop cotton imports linked to the Uyghur genocide, and challenging the U.K.'s involvement in war crimes in Yemen and Palestine through weapons sales.

Thank you so much for helping us disrupt the illegal sale of UK arms.