News / Interviews

S Arabia should have no seat at UNHRC: Pundit

Saturday, 02 July 2016 4:01 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 02 July 2016 4:18 AM ]

Yemeni children take part in a demonstration against the removal of the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from the United Nations annual blacklist of child rights violators, on June 16, 2016, in front of the UN office in Sana’a. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Sara Flounders, the co-director of the International Action Center from New York, and Nabil Mikhail, a professor at George Washington University, to discuss why Saudi Arabia is allowed to get away with its grim human rights record and its crimes against children in Yemen.

Flounders said the matter of Saudi Arabia having a seat and being the chair at the United Nations Human Rights Council shows an “absolute fraud” and it is “shameful and criminal.” She added the situation means the United Nations is “completely toothless.”

The activist also criticized the UN for covering up the Saudi regime’s violation of human rights in Yemen, when Riyadh threatened to cut its funding to the international body, noting that it is the United States’ policy to threaten to withhold funding from UN humanitarian programs if the Israeli regime is being slammed at the organization.

So, “these positions are for higher pay, and have no standing based on justice or human rights, and it is a shameful day and it exposes the hypocrisy of the UN on fundamental questions,” she maintained.

“It is up to people of the whole world to demand that Saudi Arabia be removed and be condemned for its role in Yemen and its crimes against its own people along with its support of dictatorships - billions of dollars to the dictatorship in Egypt - to the efforts to overthrow the government in Syria, its role in the support of ISIS (Daesh) and terrorists organizations,” Flounders said, concluding that “Saudi Arabia should have no position at the UN human rights body at all.”

Mikhail, for her part, believes the issue of human rights in Saudi Arabia or any other country is more important than the debate over whether the Saudi kingdom can get a seat or not at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In a June 2 report, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticized the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen for killing and maiming children by adding it to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children's rights during conflict. However, Ban removed the Saudi-led coalition from the blacklist after the Saudis threatened to halt their fund for the UN.

Saudi Arabia began airstrikes against the Yemeni people in March 2015. Since then, nearly 10,000 people - about half of them civilians - have been killed and millions more have been displaced.

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