FCNL, in partnership with 71 other organizations, signed a letter urging members of Congress to support of S.J.Res. 7, Sens. Bernie Sanders (VT), Mike Lee (UT), and Chris Murphy (CT)’s legislation to end U.S. military participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The signers include a diverse coalition of groups, including peace and security, humanitarian, mass-movement, faith-based, atrocities prevention, and constitutional rights-focused organizations that collectively represent millions of Americans, based in every congressional district in the country.
February 26th, 2019
Dear Senators,
We urge you to vote in favor of SJRes 7, which invokes the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to end unconstitutional U.S. military participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign in Yemen introduced by Senators Sanders, Lee, and Murphy.
The war in Yemen has helped create the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the UN, with roughly 12 million people at risk of famine. Aid agencies have described Yemen as worst place in the world to be a child—the conflict has claimed the lives of at least 85,000 children under the age of five from hunger and disease. More than 1 million people have been infected with cholera, with an alarming 10,000 new cases each week. All of the parties have demonstrated a near-total indifference to the welfare of Yemeni civilians. In one particularly harmful example of this, the Saudi-led coalition has imposed a de-facto blockade on Yemen and impeded the flow of food, fuel, and medicine, pushing prices of essential goods out of reach for millions of Yemenis.
On December 13th, 2018, the U.S. Senate, led by Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy, passed an identical measure, SJRes 54, with a 56-member bipartisan majority.
Aid group Oxfam America noted, “It was no coincidence that on the same day the Senate passed the War Powers Resolution in December 2018, we saw the most substantive and encouraging breakthroughs in peace talks,” and upon its reintroduction this year, declared, “It’s time to remind the world that Americans will not stand by while our government further imperils millions of innocent people caught in a bloody, senseless war.”
Furthermore, it is clear that aspects of the United States’ involvement in Yemen are fully outside of the scope of the Constitution and fly in the face of the explicit delegation of war powers to Congress in Article I. James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” once wrote, “The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.”
We urge the Senate to reassert Congress’s authority over war and peace by passing SJRes 7. We ask that you vote in favor of this bill to send a clear signal to the Executive Branch that unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign in Yemen must end.
Thank you for your consideration of this urgent matter.
Sincerely,
Action Corps
Action Corps NYC
American Friends Service Committee
Antiwar.com
Arabian Rights Watch Association
Avaaz
Center for International Policy
Chicago Area Peace Action
Chicago Area Peace Action - DePaul
Chicago Area Peace Action - Loyola
Church of the Brethren Office of Peacebuilding and Policy
Churches for Middle East Peace
Coalition for Peace Action
CodePink
Committee For Responsible Foreign Policy
Common Defense
Conference of Superiors of Men (Catholic)
Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, US Provinces
Council for a Livable World
CREDO
Demand Progress
Environmentalists Against the War
Foreign Policy for America
Franciscan Action Network
FreedomWorks
Friends Committee on National Legislation
In Defense of Christians
Indivisible
Institute for Policy Studies, New Internationalism Project
Jewish World Watch
Just Foreign Policy
Leadership Conference of Women Religious
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Massachusetts Peace Action
Middle East Crisis Committee
MoveOn
MPower Change
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
National Religious Campaign Against Torture
New Hampshire Peace Action
New Jersey Peace Action
Nonviolence International
Open Society Policy Center
Oxfam America
Pax Christi International
Peace Action
Peace Action Baltimore
Peace Action Maine
Peace Action Montgomery (Maryland)
Peace Action Network of Lancaster
Peace Action New York State
Peace Direct
People Demanding Action
Ploughshares Fund
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Sisters of Charity, BVM
STAND, The Student-Led Movement to End Mass Atrocities
Stop Genocide Now
Students for Yemen
The Libertarian institute
The United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
Truman National Security Project
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
United for Peace and Justice
VoteVets
Win Without War
Women Coalition of NYC
Women’s March
World Beyond War
Yemeni Alliance Committee
Yemen Freedom Council
Yemen Peace Project