The UN report, released on June 3 and covering the period from January to December 2015, documents the beginning of air strikes by the US-backed, Saudi-led coalition in Yemen on 26 March 2015. According to the report, intensive aerial bombardment took a devastating toll on the civilian population and ‘grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict.’ The report lists the Saudi Arabia-led coalition for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals, maintaining that 60 per cent of child casualties (death of 510 children and 667 more injuries) were attributed to Saudi Arabia.
The report, obviously, ruffled the feathers on Saudi Arabia’s sensitivities of its rights record at home and abroad, and prompted the Arab state to pressure the UN into removing the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition from the UN’s blacklist on children’s rights violations. The pressure and threat to de-funding several UN programs by Saudi Arabia caused the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to cave in – in what Amnesty International called an ‘unprecedented’ and ‘unconscionable’ move – and announce that he was ‘temporarily’ removing Saudi Arabia from the blacklist. However, Saudi diplomats to the UN were quick to describe the change as an ‘irreversible’ moral victory, Amnesty reported.
When asked whether he finds the UN chief’s stance on this issue credible, Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, said Ban Ki-moon has made a strong statement in this regard; “one can argue whether Ban responded in the best way to the ultimatum by Saudi Arabia and other states to cease funding UN humanitarian programs if his office did not remove the Saudi coalition from the ‘list of shame’,” he said, adding “There is every reason to think it was a serious threat – consider Saudi decision to cut off all assistance to Lebanon after that country refused to join Saudi in cutting diplomatic relations with Iran a few months ago.”
The UN Secretary General said removing Saudi Arabia from the blacklist was ‘one of the most painful and difficult decisions’ he had had to make, citing the prospect of countries defunding UN programs for the reason he had caved in to pressure from the Riyadh regime, who is actually chairing a UN human rights panel. In Stork’s opinion, what Ban did – “publicly calling out the Saudis and making totally clear that he felt forced to make that decision – this was a strong statement and a good decision.”
“Remember it was not just Saudi Arabia but its other GCC friends who made the threat to cut off funding. So of course the threat was serious,” he stressed.
While this was the first time the UN has ever removed a country from such a list, the international organization had backed off from including Israel in last year’s report as a regime responsible for the death of hundreds of children and injury of thousands in the 2014 armed conflict in Gaza. It makes one wonder, when Saudi Arabia with an assessment of 1.1% share of UN funding in current year and an average of about 0.8% share in the last decade can so easily have its name cleared off from a blacklist, where does that leave a country like the United States with 22% share of the funding. Can anyone believe that these funds and contributions have not affected other UN decisions in regard to Iran's nuclear program or the Palestinian issue?
“The US has a very poor record when it comes to this sort of thing, having cut off funding to particular UN agencies and threatened others,” Stork said. “And the US campaigned heavily (and successfully) one year earlier to keep Israel off that very same list.”
One year has passed since the Saudi regime launched airstrikes in Yemen, and more than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since the onset of the aggression. The war is still continuing and apparently, the UN has failed to take decisive measures to bring Saudi Arabia to halt its aggression in Yemen. When the most representative inter-governmental organization of the world in charge of maintaining international peace and security finds itself in despair for performing its duties, what else could be done to stop the ongoing senseless war and suffering in Yemen?
Stork said while the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has done a good job of documenting Saudi (and other) violations in Yemen, “decisive measures” are the purview of the Security Council, where the permanent members often stand in the way of serious measures – like how the US has protected Israel.
“And the Security Council permanent members have a terrible record when it comes to supporting the Secretary-General – just look at the dispute with Morocco a few months ago over Ban using word “occupation” to characterize status of Western Sahara,” he added.
Belkis Wille, the Yemen and Kuwait researcher with Human Rights Watch, also believed that “the decision to remove Saudi Arabia from the blacklist, particularly as it was the leading contributor to the maiming and killing of children in Yemen during 2015, will have a lasting effect in terms of the UN’s credibility in reporting on human rights in Yemen.”
Wille, who is responsible for researching abuses and conducting local and international advocacy on human rights issues affecting Yemen, further added that “it will be very hard for the UN to restore any kind of trust and objectivity into its reporting after this.”
Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, is a general expert on human rights issues in the region. Author of numerous books and widely published articles on the Middle East, he has lectured widely at universities and public forums around the world. Stork served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and holds an M.A. in International Affairs/Middle East Studies from Columbia University.
Belkis Wille is the Yemen and Kuwait researcher with Human Rights Watch. In 2009, she documented alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity with the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza. Wille received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, her graduate diploma in law from City University London, and her LLM in human rights and humanitarian law from the University of Essex.
Interview by Marjohn Sheikhi
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