Local Editor
Saudi Arabia's U.N. envoy said Friday "there is no justification whatsoever" for the Saudi-led coalition launching a military aggression against Yemen to be on a U.N. blacklist for killing and injuring nearly 700 children in 2016.
Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi described the information and figures in the U.N.'s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict as “inaccurate and misleading”.
This year's report was eagerly awaited because last year the U.S.-backed coalition was put on the blacklist but removed by then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon under intense pressure from Saudi Arabia.
His successor, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, however, changed the blacklist which for the first time this year lists governments, rebel groups and other parties to conflicts that are taking action to protect children - and those combatants that aren't doing anything.
Saudi Arabia is on the list of parties that are taking action.
"We think there is no justification whatsoever for the coalition to be listed anywhere because we are conducting activities there in accordance with international legitimacy, in accordance with international law" and with a 2015 Security Council resolution, Al-Mouallimi said.
Yemen, which is on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has been engulfed in civil war since September 2014, when Houthi revolutionaries entered the capital of Sana’a and overthrew President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi's regime. In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign in support of Hadi's regime and against Houthi forces allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, mainly using airstrikes.
Since then, the war in Yemen has killed over 10,000 civilians, displaced 3 million people, and led to the world's largest cholera outbreak with over 700,000 suspected cases and more than 2,000 deaths this year.
In the new report, Gutteres said, "the coalition's actions objectively led to the listing for the killing and maiming of children, with 683 child casualties attributed to this party, and as a result of being responsible for 38 verified incidents, for attacks on schools and hospitals during 2016."
The secretary-general said there were 1,340 verified child casualties in Yemen - over 50 percent caused by the U.S.-backed coalition - and 414 casualties, or just over 30 percent, by the Houthis and their allies.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
