Saudi Arabia invites UN team over child abuse blacklist
Saudi Arabia has invited a UN team to Riyadh for talks after pressuring the world body into dropping the kingdom from a blacklist of children's rights violators.
Saudi UN Ambassador Abdullah al-Mouallimi extended the formal invitation in a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last week, the UN said.
“We’re studying it. We obviously remain interested in what information the Saudi-led coalition could provide us,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UN drew international criticism after Ban acknowledged that he had expunged Riyadh from the blacklist under "undue pressure."
The UN has said the removal was temporary, pending consultations between the two sides to review a United Nations report on deaths of Yemeni children in Saudi airstrikes.
Dujarric said “our preference” would be to hold meetings at UN headquarters in New York.
The UN report, published on June 3, said Saudi Arabia was responsible for 60% of child casualties in Yemen last year, during which it killed 510 children and injured 667 others.
Ban said he decided to temporarily take Saudi Arabia off the blacklist after the kingdom and its allies threatened to cut off funding to UN humanitarian programs.
The Saudi ambassador to the UN declared that the changes were “final and unconditional” and that Riyadh had been “vindicated.”
The announcement sparked international outcry and 20 prominent human rights groups urged the UN chief to put Riyadh back on the blacklist.
In a letter, signed by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam among others, the rights groups accused Ban of giving in to “political manipulation” by the oil-rich kingdom.
Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen in March 2015 in a bid to reinstate resigned President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush a Houthi movement.
More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured in the aggression.
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