AhlulBayt News Agency - The United Nations should be lauded for blacklisting Saudi Arabia and its partners in crime for maiming and killing innocent children with the ongoing military aggression in Yemen.
According to an annual report on children and armed conflict released by the UN, the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 60 percent of a total of 510 deaths and 667 wounding in 2015 after its regime-change campaign began in March, 2015 - a six-fold increase, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) separately points out.
HRW has similarly warned that the flow of weapons to Saudi Arabia has "facilitated appalling crimes" in Yemen, and that the US and other Western nations are complicit in the deaths of children there due to their continued allegiance with the Persian Gulf nation. Add to this the use of internationally banned cluster bombs against the civilians and the question becomes obvious: What next?
Well, it is obvious that the regime-change fantasy has taken a devastating toll on women and children. In order to help end these grave violations, the international community, the UN in particular, should take some major steps first, including ending the war, suspending arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and forming an international mechanism to investigate violations by those Western nations that still continue to violate International Law by arming the Saudi-led coalition, including the United States, Britain and several other European Union member states.
The UN should also impose sanctions on those that engage in the killing and maiming of children, attacks on civilian infrastructures, schools, weddings, refugee camps and even hospitals. Needless to say, a report that stops short of placing the US on the UN list, let alone making any mention of its direct involvement in the Saudi war crimes, cannot be trusted at all. Simply put, it will go nowhere, as it is biased.
To avoid such scenario, the world body has a duty to also include on its list of shame those that have taken part in the deadly airstrikes against civilian targets in Yemen, including on Doctors Without Borders, which the medical charity and other human rights groups have labelled as "war crime". Indeed, something is terribly wrong when the report simply claims that such attacks "were carried out by international forces" without naming and shaming the actual culprits.
Also, this does in no way mean that Western nations are still free to go ahead with their arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Quite the opposite, they still risk being used in Yemen in violation of international protocols even if they are not mentioned in the list of shame. International Law, likewise, requires them to support calls by the UN to initiate an international, impartial investigation into the Saudi war crimes and violations.
Into the argument, in several documented attacks, the Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have identified the use of American-supplied cluster munitions in Yemen. They have even called upon the United States to denounce their use by the Saudi-led coalition but to no avail. The US, which is openly endorsing the war, continues to flout International Law. The use of such munitions plays a role in explaining why there is such a massive civilian toll in the war.
The UN has reported for months that the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for approximately two-thirds of civilian casualties. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has acknowledged that the US is arming and resupplying the Saudi-led coalition. The Pentagon has also revealed that it is providing the coalition with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and logistics information. Moreover, media reports have exposed that American military officials are physically in the command room with Saudi bombers, and have access to a list of targets.
The Saudi-led coalition, which has been uninterruptedly bombing the poorest nation in the Middle East for more than a year now, includes Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. The non-signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions include all 10 countries. Meaning, they all have to be included in the UN list of shame for their cluster crimes as well.
The regime changers should recognize that their war of attrition against the poorest nation in the Middle Easy is immoral, insane and monstrous. Having said that, it is now up to the United Nations to carry out its duties in practice or risk being discredited for inaction. The world body must publicly declare that what Riyadh and its coalition are doing to Yemen readily qualifies as crimes against humanity.
By their refusal to end the war, and by hiding behind powerful lobbies at the UN, the warmongers cannot proclaim impunity from international prosecution and accountability. Their decision to turn Yemen into a failed state has no benevolent purpose and their intimate connection to war crimes and murder will never be erased from memory.
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source : FNA
Monday
6 June 2016
5:16:32 AM
758442
UN blacklists Saudi regime, its allies for Killing innocent Yemeni children; What Next?
According to an annual report on children and armed conflict released by the UN, the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 60 percent of a total of 510 deaths and 667 wounding in 2015 after its regime-change campaign began in March, 2015 - a six-fold increase, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) separately points out.