Saudi Arabia Puts a Pressure on United Nations

Yamanyoon-28 August 2017

The secretary general, António Guterres, has been reviewing an annual report, called “Children and Armed Conflict,” which he is expected to release soon. In previous years, the report has included an annex that lists armies deemed responsible for killing and injuring children.

Whether Mr. Guterres will put Saudi Arabia on the so-called child-killer list this year has become a matter of intense conjecture.

Focus on that decision has been further intensified by reports in recent days of Saudi bombings that killed civilians in Yemen, combined with alarm over famine and disease in the country. The United Nations described the situation last week as the worlds’ largest humanitarian crisis.

Saudi Arabia was briefly named to the list of children’s rights violators in 2016 because of the Yemen war. The report found that Saudi-led bombardments were the leading cause of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year.

But under acute pressure from Saudi Arabia, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general at the time, removed the country from the blacklist and in doing so implied that the Saudis had threatened to halt funding to the United Nations.

The original source of this article is  Reuters News