U.N. report: Saudi coalition killed 502 children in Yemen
A Saudi-led military coalition conducting airstrikes in Yemen committed “grave violations” of human rights against children last year, killing 502 and injuring 838, according to a draft report by the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“The killing and maiming of children remained the most prevalent violation” of children’s rights in Yemen, according to the 41-page draft report obtained by Foreign Policy. “In the reporting period, attacks carried out by air were the cause of over half of all child casualties, with at least 349 children killed and 333 children injured.”
Saudi Arabia and its allies have been trying since March 2015, with U.S. backing, to force Houthi rebels out of power in Yemen. But the coalition’s airstrikes have been heavily criticized for killing civilians.
Urging the U.S.
The chief author of the confidential report, Virginia Gamba, the U.N. chief ’s special representative for children abused in war time, informed top U.N. officials Monday, that she intends to recommend the Saudi-led coalition be added to a list a countries and entities that kill and maim children, according to a well-placed source. The final decision will have to be taken by Guterres.
The Saudi-led air coalition was responsible for inflicting the largest number of child casualties, 683, with Houthi rebels killing or injuring 414. In contrast, the Islamic State was responsible for six child casualties and al-Qaida one.
The Saudi-led coalition is the only force in Yemen with warplanes and helicopter gunships, making it the likely perpetrator of such acts.
The findings were included in a draft copy of the U.N.’s annual report of Children and Armed Conflict, which documented human rights violations of at least 15,500 children last year by government forces, terrorists and armed opposition groups in more than a dozen conflicts around the world. Four thousand documented abuses of children were attributed to governments, with the vast majority of remaining atrocities, 11,500, committed by terrorist organizations or insurgents.
Saudi officials have privately urged the U.N. to engage in further high level discussions before publishing the report. And they have enlisted the support of the United States, which has urged the U.N. not to list the Saudi-led coalition, saying it’s unfair to implicate all coalition members, like those who have not engaged in atrocities, according to two well-placed sources. In addition to Saudi Arabia, the coalition includes Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.
Instead, Washington has pressed the U.N. to list only those individual states directly responsible for atrocities, according to those sources. But identifying specific states is complicated by the fact that the coalition does not release information on which coalition members are engaged in specific operations.
Report not ‘finalized’
The latest draft report reflects a drop in the overall number of documented casualties in Yemen. Gamba’s draft attributed the fall to a temporary ebb in fighting that followed the signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement in April 2016. But she also suggested the actual casualty count could be higher, noting that “the documentation of violations against children was constrained by access restrictions and insecurity.”
Gamba told Foreign Policy that the contents of the final report, which is still being discussed with various U.N. offices, have “not been finalized.”
Last year, Saudi Arabia was included on the list on the grounds that the Saudiled coalition was responsible for more than half of the 1,953 child casualties in the Yemen conflict.