The United Nations has turned into a tool to defend crime perpetrators
We strongly condemn the recent position of the United Nations regarding the Yemeni crisis, which is exacerbating over time, amid shameful silence by different international bodies over the continuous violations by the perpetrators who guaranteed their escape from punishment or accountability.
Recently, the United Nations announced the UN List of Shame for the year 2021, and shockingly, the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia was not included in this list that was issued in the United Nations report on Children and Armed Conflict, which did not recognise the suffering of the Yemeni children or seek to hold accountable those who turned their lives to hell.
The List of Shame is a list that is issued annually in a report of the United Nations on children and armed conflict, which describes warring parties that fail to keep children safe during the conflict.
In 2020, about 194 Yemeni children were killed or maimed by coalition forces, according to Save the Children, in addition to tens of thousands of children who lost their lives, became permanently disabled, or lost their breadwinner and shelter over the seven years of war that began since September 2014 in Yemen, which was exacerbated after the Saudi military intervention, by direct order of Mohamed bin Salman.
In this regards, we would like to refer to a study issued recently by some human rights centers entitled “Small Arms in Small Hands – German arms exports violate children’s rights”, which showed that at least eight thousand children died or were maimed in the Yemeni war, about half of them (3,550 of them) died at the hands of the Saudi-led military coalition forces, which are funded by the United States, Britain, and Germany.
According to the study issued by the organizations “Brut for Die Welt” (Bread for the World) and the organization “Terre des Homes” (Terre des Hommes), Germany is supplying weapons and ammunition to conflict countries in which children are killed or recruited, in reference to what is happening in Yemen at the hands of Saudi Arabia, which kills children with these weapons.
Not including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the rest of the coalition countries in this list and ignoring the ongoing crimes they are committing against the poor Yemeni people is only a green light to continue destroying the lives of Yemenis, especially children who are not guilty of this heinous war.
We join the “Save the Children” organization that criticized the United Nations resolution as a “disappointing decision”, during which United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres failed once again to include the Saudi coalition on this year’s “list of shame” after it was crossed off the list last year, while the Secretary-General pledged to reinsert it unless there was a “significant and sustained reduction in killing and maiming”.
This disappointing decision sends another message indicating that the coalition countries or the perpetrators will remain free from any legal or even moral accountability as long as they have strong “friends” in the international community who provide them with immunity for all their violations.
We affirm that as long as international bodies and UN bodies continue to follow this negative approach in dealing with international criminals, the victims of these perpetrators will accumulate until it is difficult to count their number, and the world will witness a humanitarian catastrophe more ferocious than that afflicting Yemen, which the United Nations considered as the worst catastrophe in modern history.
We call on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to reconsider his decision and make the parties to the various conflicts around the world on the same level, as all victims are equal in rights and should never be differentiated, especially since the crimes are on a similar level of atrocity.
