S.Amdt. 3798

SA 3798. Mr. MERKLEY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed
to amendment SA 3695 proposed by Mr. Shelby to the bill H.R. 6157,
making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year
ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes; which was ordered to
lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place in title VIII of division A,
insert the following:
Sec. __. (a) Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The Saudi-led coalition air strike on a bus on August
9, 2018, in the Saada Province of Yemen reportedly killed 51
people, 40 of which were children, and injured dozens more.
(2) That air strike represents one of more than 17,000
total air strikes conducted by the Saudi-led coalition since
March 2015. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
assesses that, from December 2017 to May 2018, Saudi-led
coalition air strikes accounted for 80 percent of the
civilian deaths in the 5 Yemeni governorates most affected by
the fighting.
(b) No funds appropriated or otherwise made available by
this Act may be made available for authorized in-flight
refueling of Saudi or Saudi-led coalition non-United States
aircraft conducting missions in Yemen pursuant to section
2342 of title 10, United States Code, or any other applicable
statutory authority unless--
(1) the Government of Saudi Arabia or the government of a
Saudi-led coalition member provides the Secretary of Defense
advance notification of the intended target in Yemen; and
(2) the Secretary of Defense certifies to the appropriate
committees of Congress with a high degree of confidence that
the Saudi or Saudi-led coalition mission in Yemen exercises
the proportionate use of force and discriminates between
military and non-military targets, in accordance with
international humanitarian law and the laws of armed
conflict.
(c) In this section, the term ``appropriate committees of
Congress'' means--

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(1) the Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on
Foreign Relations, and the Committee on Appropriations of the
Senate; and
(2) the Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on
Foreign Affairs, and the Committee on Appropriations of the
House of Representatives.
______