March 2018 – In this policy note, Watchlist calls upon the UN Secretary-General to elevate children’s rights above politics and ensure a complete and credible listing of perpetrators. The note provides the Secretary-General with recommendations for inclusion in his 2018 annual report and its 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 for 2017 across 25 relevant country situations, 12 of which are featured in the report. 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. To this end, Watchlist also calls upon the Secretary-General and UN Member States to ensure allocation of sufficient and dedicated staff and budgetary resources to child protection to enable to the UN to effectively monitor, report, and respond to grave violations against children.
This note is published in anticipation of further political interference by certain Member States with the listing process as was the case in recent years, where some exerted undue political pressure on the Secretary-General to see themselves or their friends off the list of perpetrators in his reports’ annexes.
Read Watchlist’s A Credible List: Recommendations for the 2018 Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict and Listings.
