March 2017 – In this policy note, Watchlist calls upon the UN Secretary-General to put children’s rights up front and ensure a credible and accurate listing of perpetrators. The note provides the Secretary-General with recommendations for inclusion in his 2017 annual report annexes, while recommending other parties and country situations for further UN investigations to determine a potential listing. To formulate these recommendations, Watchlist examined all publicly available information on the five trigger violations across sixteen relevant country situations. The findings and recommendations are meant to inform the Secretary-General’s decision-making process, but also to advance the discussion regarding the next steps the UN could take, both at headquarters and in the field, to more comprehensively address the issue of child rights violations in all relevant situations. The note is published following two years of Member States exerting undue political pressure on the Secretary-General to ensure specific parties are omitted from the list of violators in his reports’ annexes.

Read Watchlist’s Policy Note: 2017 Annual Report: Putting Children’s Rights Up Front.