UN removes Arab coalition from child rights blacklist

The United Nations said on Tuesday that it had removed the Arab-led coalition fighting in Yemen from a child rights blacklist, pending a joint review by the world body and the coalition.

The UN report on children and armed conflict – released last Thursday – said the coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year, killing 510 and wounding 667, and half the attacks on schools and hospitals.

Following a complaint by Saudi Arabia, however, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon agreed to a joint review by the world body and the coalition of the cases cited in the annual report of states and armed groups that violate children’s rights in war.

“Pending the conclusions of the joint review, the secretary-general removes the listing of the coalition in the report’s annex,” Ban’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

But Saudi Arabia’s UN ambassador, Abdallah al-Mouallimi, said the removal of the coalition from the blacklist was “irreversible and unconditional”.

IN PICTURES: Life on hold in war-shattered Sanaa

“We were wrongly placed on the list,” he told reporters. “We know that this removal is final.”

Mouallimi, who described the removal as a vindication, earlier on Monday said the figures in the UN report were “wildly exaggerated” and that “the most up-to-date equipment in precision targeting” is used.

Mouallimi met the UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson at UN headquarters to discuss the listing.

Saudi Arabia had not been consulted prior to the publication of this year’s report, Mouallimi added.

Ahmed al-Asiri, spokesman of the Arab-led coalition, said in a statement sent to Reuters news agency late on Sunday that the UN had not based enough of its report on information supplied by the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

WATCH: Has the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen achieved its goal?

The Arab-led coalition began a military campaign in Yemen in March last year with the aim of preventing Iran-allied Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen’s ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking power.

Some 6,000 people, about half of them civilians, have been killed in Yemen since last March, according to the UN.

The Houthis, Yemen government forces and pro-government groups have been on the UN blacklist for at least five years and are considered “persistent perpetrators”. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula also reappeared on the list.