UN Secretary-General:
Ensure credible, accurate, and complete listing in 2017
This summer, UN Secretary-General (SG) António Guterres will issue his first annual report on children and armed conflict. Since March, Watchlist has engaged in advocacy and conducted field-based research in support of its call upon the SG to, in his first year of tenure, ensure an accurate, credible, and complete listing of perpetrators of the grave violations against children’s rights in conflict based on UN-verified data, not politics. This resounding call comes in the face of two years of blatant politicizing of the SG’s listing process where countries and their powerful allies have sought to remain off the list by exercising undue political pressure. Meanwhile, the SG’s list is a proven tool for accountability reflected by numerous parties’ compliance with time-bound action plans with the UN and ceasing violations as triggered by the listings.
Damage is seen inside a hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontières after it was hit by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition air strike in the Abs district of Hajja province, Yemen August 16, 2016. The Saudi Arabia-led coalition was listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and/or hospitals by the SG in his 2016 annual report, but later removed. © REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad
