Saudi Arabia demands sources for UN blacklist of child rights violators
Saudi Arabia wants the UN to hand over the information of those who contributed to blacklisting the monarchy as a child rights violator.
The request was made via a letter by the Saudi UN Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon dated June 8, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The United Nations blacklisted Saudi Arabia in a report released earlier in the month, saying that the monarchy was responsible for 60 percent of the 785 deaths of children in Yemen last year.
But, on June 6, Ban removed the kingdom from the list and announced that he has accepted “a proposal by Saudi Arabia that the United Nations and the Saudi-led coalition review jointly the cases and numbers” cited in the Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) report.
Following the U-turn by the UN, Ban admitted that the Saudis were temporarily removed from the list after they administered “undue pressure” on the world body by threatening to cut off funding to humanitarian programs.
Noting that the decision had been “one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make,” Ban added that he had given in as threats raised “the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously.”
The UN move sparked a barrage of criticism from various human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Oxfam.
In the letter, Mouallimi expressed "his sincere appreciation for the removal," adding that, the Saudi-led coalition "requests a detailed overview of the methodology and modality that were used to create the numbers in the report and the sources relied on for said numbers."
Responding to the request, UN officials said they did not think it was possible to disclose the report’s sources.
"We're studying it, and we obviously remain interested in what information the Saudi-led coalition can provide us," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Dujarric also declined a Saudi invitation for UN experts to travel to the coalition headquarters in Riyadh to talk about the report, saying that it "would be our preference" to convene such a meeting at the UN.
Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen on March 26, 2015, in a bid to reinstate former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured in the Saudi aggression.
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