Muslim allies of Saudi Arabia piled pressure on U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon over the blacklisting of a Saudi-led coalition for killing children in Yemen, with Riyadh threatening to cut Palestinian aid and funds to other U.N. programs, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday. (June 7)
The United Nations announced on Monday it had removed the coalition from a child rights blacklist – released last week – pending a joint review by the world body and the coalition of cases of child deaths and injuries during the war in Yemen.
“The secretary-general has removed the Saudi-led coalition from the list in the annex. We expect that information should be provided to us by the coalition and we will then review it. The secretary-general has decided to do this to give the coalition an opportunity to present information that coalition members insist is important to our analysis. You know, I think it is at every attack against civilians every, attack against civilian infrastructure the secretary-general has spoken out forcefully has condemned it and has always called for an investigation,” said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
That removal prompted angry reactions from human rights groups, which accused Ban of caving in to pressure from powerful countries. They said that Ban, currently in the final year of his second term, risked harming his legacy as U.N. secretary-general.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources said Ban’s office was bombarded with calls from Gulf Arab foreign ministers, as well as ministers from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), after the blacklisting was announced last week. One U.N. official spoke of a “full-court press” over the blacklisting.
“Bullying, threats, pressure,” another diplomatic source told Reuters on condition of anonymity about the reaction to the blacklisting, adding that it was “real blackmail.”
The source said there was also a threat of “clerics in Riyadh meeting to issue a fatwa against the U.N., declaring it anti-Muslim, which would mean no contacts of OIC members, no relations, contributions, support, to any U.N. projects, programs.”
A fatwa is a ruling on a point of Islamic Sharia law by an authorized body. In Saudi Arabia, fatwas can only be issued by the group of top, government-appointed clerics and are sometimes commissioned by the ruling family to back up its political positions.
The main Saudi complaints were that the U.N. had not based its report on information supplied by the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and accused the world body of not consulting with the coalition. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, however, said on Tuesday that the Saudis had been consulted.
Several diplomatic sources said that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) would be hit especially hard if the blacklisting were upheld. Saudi Arabia was the fourth biggest donor to UNRWA after the United States, European Union and Britain, having supplied it nearly $100 million last year.
Coalition members Kuwait and United Arab Emirates are also key donors for UNRWA, together supplying nearly $50 million in 2015.
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