UK firm finalizing massive military deal with Saudi Arabia

Human rights groups and activists have criticized a major British consultancy and accounting firm for offering a major military contract in Saudi Arabia, saying the company would become complicit in Saudi crimes in the war on Yemen.
PricewaterhouseCoopers said on Tuesday it was entering into a deal with the Saudi army to modernize the kingdom’s army, according to a report by The Guardian.
This agreement will be issued in its first stages, such as recruitment, resource provision, performance management, strategic workforce planning, and how to manage and communicate change.
But the company failed to say what assurances it would put to avoid getting involved in a devastating Saudi war on Yemen that killed 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
Amnesty International, a UK-based rights group, said PricewaterhouseCoopers’ provision of military assistance to Saudi Arabia could make the company complicit in the crimes Riyadh committed in the Yemen war.
Peter Frankenthal, Director of the Economic Affairs Program at Amnesty International UK, said that the United Nations Guidelines on Business and Human Rights show that the company can be considered complicit if it considers that it benefits Of violations committed by another party.
According to The Guardian, PwC asked experts and consultants in London whether they were interested in moving to Riyadh to start work. The company revealed to its employees that the Saudi plan to simplify and modernize its army was “ambitious” and “in size and size we have rarely seen before.”
The United Nations estimates that some 22 million people in Yemen, about 80 percent of the country’s poor population, now need humanitarian assistance as a result of three years of Saudi-led war.
Many Western countries, particularly the United Kingdom, have criticized Saudi Arabia for its military support, saying the kingdom is using weapons purchased from those countries against unarmed civilians in Yemen.