Penny Lawrence, deputy chief executive of Oxfam GB, will say: “UK arms and military support are fuelling a brutal war in Yemen, harming the very people the Arms Trade Treaty is created to protect”.
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In a separate statement issued on Monday, the Control Arms Coalition, which campaigns for stricter arms sales controls, also joined the chorus of criticism, accusing Western powers such as Britain, the United States and France of breaking worldwide law by selling vast amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Lawrence further said that Britain “misled its own parliament about its oversight of arms sales”, adding that “its global credibility is in jeopardy as it commits to action on paper but does the opposite in reality”.
She will also ask how the government can insist that other nations abide by a treaty it helped set up “if it flagrantly ignores it?”.
“Any decision to sell more arms to Saudi Arabia should be given adequate time for full deliberation by Congress”, the letter to President Obama will say, according to a draft.
A British government spokeswoman said it took its arms export responsibilities “very seriously” and operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world.
“The ATT has been in force for almost two years but some States Parties are violating it with impunity”, Macdonald said.
“We are not aware of any compelling reason why congressional approval of the sale could not be postponed to allow for meaningful congressional debate on this issue that has major implications for both civilians in Yemen as well as our national security”, the draft says.
The battles are between several different groups, with the main fighting between forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, and those allied to Zaidi Shia rebels known as Houthis, who forced Mr Hadi to flee the capital Sanaa in February 2015.
There have been repeated strikes on civilian targets. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has described the Saudi-led coalition bombings as “indiscriminate”.
The kingdom leads an Arab coalition that began air raids in March previous year and later sent in ground forces to support Yemen’s internationally recognised government after Huthi Shiite rebels and their allies overran much of the country.
France and Britain have ratified the ATT.
The UN has estimated that more than 6,000 people have lost their lives in the war while millions have had to leave their homes.
The fighting has destroyed much of the already limited infrastructure in one of the Arab world’s poorest countries.
Control Arms accused those countries of “flouting worldwide law in plain sight by continuing to sell billions of dollars worth of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia”.
In a statement on Friday, the Pentagon cautioned that its support for Saudi Arabia in its campaign was not “a blank check”, however, and said it has pressed the coalition on the need to minimise civilian casualties.
“Countless well-respected lawyers have now provided evidence that shows that the risk [of violating humanitarian law] is extremely high and that the United Kingdom has flouted its own national laws and global law”, Macdonald said.
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The Saudi-led coalition warplanes intensified their airstrikes on residential areas across Yemen earlier this week, targeting a hospital in Hajjah province just two days after killing and wounding a number of children at a school in Sa’ada province.
