Not everyone enjoys the Olympic spirit

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Not all people are celebrating Team GB's gold medals (PA/Rex)

I cannot see what’s so commendable about the Olympics. It seems to me to be the ultimate form of total self-absorption – admittedly taking a great deal of self-discipline and hard work, but for what? To jump a minuscule fraction higher than anyone else, or row fractionally faster than another team, or to repeatedly and rigidly discipline an unfortunate horse to carry you about in a totally unnatural way. This last one seems actually cruel to me, as it involves and animal in the physical torture as well as an athlete.

At the end of this supreme effort is the world a better place? Is there less cruelty? Is there an environmental benefit? No. Some people feel proud of their nation’s tally of medals and some are disappointed, so it’s divisive as well. The phenomenal cost of it all is mind-boggling, and the vast sums of lottery money poured into promoting these athletes’ personal ambitions could be put to vastly better use to help the poor and protect the environment.

Sorry, I don’t get it and I never will. I think it’s a massive ego trip, a crashing bore and an utter waste of time and human effort.

Penny Little

Oxfordshire

The continuing bad-mouthing of Rio is just naive. When you live in a favela, there is no money. You don t have any certainty or security.

But it's worse than that in Brazil. Drive through the tunnel from the airport to the city and you see if extended families under cardboard. These folk wake up thinking about today only. Food, clothes, shelter is all that is on for the day.

So when most tourists and athletes are standing up in clothing costing more than these folk see in a year, do you really expect them to be fair? They have needs today that must be met. Maybe we should understand theft of possessions better in a poor society?

John Sinclair

East Riding

Sierra Leone needs more than ‘funding’ alone

Jo Lehmann writes of the continuing crisis in Sierra Leone and concludes: “Funding must be provided for these basic building blocks of good health and development. Then and only then will these nations be prepared if another epidemic hits.” But funding has been provided since the end of the war in millions if not billions of dollars and that has not resolved even the most basic issues of clean water supply and adoption of good hygiene practices. In fact, despite that funding, Sierra Leone easily succumbed to the Ebola epidemic. Sierra Leone is one of the most richly resourced countries in West Africa with its infamous diamonds, plus gold, rutile, iron ore and rare earth metals. So how does more external funding become a solution?

The solution is within the people and leadership of a country. Externally providing technical support for the need to change detrimental and self-enriching practices can gain results, but simply supporting “with funding” that will rarely reach the needy individual is more likely to exacerbate corruption. To ignore this aspect is to remove any attempt at building accountability of a government to its own people, and merely swell the coffers of those whose interest is to resist all possibility of development.

J McClean

Kent

There should be more justice than that found in the inheritance tax

The question of inheritance tax on the aristocracy is irrelevant. A large percentage of their Lordships inherited their wealth from their ancestors who were chums of William the Conqueror.

Historians are in no doubt that William was a vicious warlord who, along with his pals, committed terrible crimes against humanity in the early years of his reign, not least of which was the Harrying of the North. Contemporary chronicles vividly record the savagery of the Norman invaders and the massive scale of the destruction and the devastating famine caused by looting, burning of crops, alongside the rape and slaughter of civilians.

There is now the universally held principle that there should be no time limit on delivering justice to war criminals, or those who benefitted from such crimes, such as their descendants. Not to do so would be send a message to the villains of the world that they just have to wait for sufficient time to pass for them and their families to enjoy their ill-gotten gains.

Colin Burke

Manchester

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia and its allies are not deliberately targeting civilians in Yemen. That is the conclusion of an independent investigation conducted by the Arab coalition into allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

The inquiry also found the Houthi rebels have been using hospitals as military hideouts, in direct contravention of international humanitarian law. These findings echo a UN report released overnight showing the Houthi rebels are responsible for many of the atrocities taking place in Yemen.

The probe by the Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) – a first for the coalition that has no history of independent inquiries into officialdom – concluded that out of the eight incidents investigated, there was no intention to deliberately target civilians in bombing raids.

The JIAT consisted of representatives from the Coalition of Saudi, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Yemen. They were either experienced in the military or in the legal field. It was formed in January 2016 to investigate claims by the United Nations and humanitarian groups of breaches of international humanitarian law by the joint force in Yemen.

It found that the coalition had abided by the military rules of engagement in six out of eight accusations of attacks on a residential area, hospitals, markets, a wedding and World Food Programme (WFP) aid trucks.

The investigation found the coalition had not abided by military rules when bombing a residential complex in Mokha in July. It determined the residential complex was partly affected by “unintentional bombing” due to the presence of four military targets in the area controlled by the Houthi rebels. Inaccurate intelligence was thought to lie behind the error.

The report acknowledged errors where they were made, and JIAT recommended providing financial reparation to the families of the Mokha victims.

A claim by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) regarding raids on the organisation’s Haydan Hospital in Saada was dismissed. The investigation said Houthis were using the hospital as a hideout, ruling their actions to be a breach of international humanitarian law.

An investigation into a second claim by MSF that a mobile clinic in Taiz was affected by nearby bombings found that armed groupings of Houthi militias were targeted in the bombing, considered to be a “high-value military target that achieves military advantage as a legitimate target”.

The JIAT stressed the necessity of keeping mobile clinics away from military targets.

The JIAT investigated a claim by WFP that four trucks affiliated to the organisation carrying food supplies were bombed. However, they found the trucks were not marked to show that they belonged to an international aid organisation and concluded the bombing was the result of a lack of direct coordination between the WFP and the relevant authorities at the coalition forces command.

The JIAT’s conclusion also found the coalition had acted in accordance with international and humanitarian law in four other cases, including a purported attack on a residential area and another alleged bombing of a wedding ceremony.

JIAT’s legal advisor, Lieutenant General Mansour Ahmed Al-Mansour from Bahrain, said the JIAT’s work in assessing the accidents “depends on ensuring the legal aspects of target operations that are compatible with the international law and on using the American and British mechanism to assess accidents in addition to the law of armed conflict”.

Whilst the investigation found that coalition forces in Yemen are committed to observing the rules laid down by international conventions on humanitarian law, Mansour also announced that the JIAT would continue to carry out its tasks independently and would publicly announce the results reached.

The conflict began when the Iranian supported Houthi rebels undertook a bloody rebellion against the legitimate Government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and, with the unanimous support of the UN Security Council resolution 2216, an Arab coalition was formed to thwart the rebellion.

Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia

London