Human rights anger for not including the Saudi-led Arab coalition on the list of shame
Human rights organizations expressed their anger at the United Nations’ failure to include the Saudi-led Arab coalition on the 2021 UN List of Shame.
Save the Children said 194 Yemeni children were killed and maimed during 2020, but the United Nations report on children and armed conflict once again failed to hold the Saudi-led Arab coalition to account.
In its report, the international organization confirmed that despite the killing and maiming of at least 194 children in Yemen in 2020, according to verified data from the United Nations, the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE gets the green light to continue destroying the lives of children in Yemen.
“In a disappointing decision, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres failed once again to include the Saudi coalition on this year’s “list of shame,” it added.
It was removed from the list last year, with a commitment by the Secretary-General to re-list it unless there is a “significant and sustained decrease in killing and maiming”.
Guterres is sending a message that reducing the number of child casualties to around two hundred is “good enough” progress by not reinstating the coalition, says Save the Children.
The “List of Shame” supplement the UN’s annual report on children and armed conflict, which describes warring parties who fail to keep children safe during conflicts.
Unfortunately, having solid friends again ensures free passage of accountability for grave violations of children’s rights, Save the Children continued.
The organization expressed its disappointment with this decision, which means that many crimes against children in these countries will remain undocumented, and accountability will remain elusive.
We strongly urge the Secretary-General to reconsider his decision and bring the parties to conflict worldwide on the same level.
Ashing added that the decision to include an armed group on the “list of shame” should be based solely on the pattern of grave violations against children that the United Nations have verified and not on politics.
Human Rights Watch criticized the failure to include the Arab coalition in Yemen on the list of countries violating children’s rights, known as the “List of Shame”.
The director of the defence of children’s rights at the International Human Rights Organization (based in New York) “Joe Baker” accused the Secretary-General of the United Nations, “Antonio Guterres”, of rescuing the warring parties involved in the killing and maiming of children from their predicament.
Joe considered that “the Secretary-General’s repeated failure to build his list on the evidence of the United Nations itself constitutes a betrayal of children and fuels impunity.”
Baker called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to abandon this approach and make sure that his list reflects the facts.
A study showed that German weapons are used in many countries where children are recruited or die because of wars, such as Yemen. In response, the German opposition called on the government to restrict exports and to pass a law to control arms exports.
Two human rights organizations expressed their dissatisfaction with violations of children’s rights due to German arms exports to regimes involved in foreign wars, led by the Al Saud regime.
The organizations “Brut de Welt” (Bread for the World) and the organization “Terre des Homs” (Terre des Hommes) criticized in a study that Germany supplies weapons and ammunition to conflict countries where children are killed or recruited.
The study is called “Small Arms in Small Hands – German Arms Exports Violate Children’s Rights”.
The authors of this study referred to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have been leading a military coalition in the Yemen war since 2015.
They added that, according to United Nations data, at least eight thousand children have been killed or maimed in this conflict, nearly half (3,550 of them) by the Saudi-led military coalition.
