UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations said on Monday it would remove the Saudi-led Arab coalition from a black list over the deaths of hundreds of children in Yemen pending a review of the facts.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch deplored the UN chief’s decision to delist the coalition. It said: “After giving a similar pass to Israel last year, the UN secretary general’s office has hit a new low by capitulating to Saudi Arabia’s brazen pressure and taking the country off its just published list of shame. Yemen’s children deserve better.

“The UN itself has extensively documented the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes in Yemen that have caused hundreds of children’s deaths and hit many schools and hospitals. The Human Rights Watch and other groups have made similar findings. As this list gives way to political manipulation, it loses its credibility and taints the secretary general’s legacy on human rights”.

Saudi Arabia had reacted angrily to the UN decision to add the coalition to a list of children’s rights violators. The world body had held the coalition responsible for 60 per cent of the 785 children’s deaths in Yemen last year.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon agreed to a Saudi proposal to review the facts and cases cited in the report jointly with the coalition, his spokesman Stephan Dujarric said.

“Pending the conclusions of the joint review, the secretary general removes the listing of the coalition in the report’s annex,” he said.

Saudi Arabia’s UN envoy Abdullah al-Mualami told reporters that the coalition felt “vindicated” and declared that the change to the list was “final and unconditional”.

Earlier on Monday, Mualami criticised a recent report by the international body on the Yemeni conflict, and claimed that the findings were “misleading” and “incorrect”.

Mualami said Saudi Arabia would not accept placement of the country or any of its allies on a “bad list”.

Mualami’s statement, made during a press conference at the UN headquarters, came after the Saudi-led Arab coalition’s military spokesman dubbed the report as “unbalanced” and not reliant on “credible statistics”. The report also gave “misleading” and “incorrect numbers”, the military spokesman said.

The Saudi envoy said that the report contained double standards, citing Israel’s exclusion from a UN list. Last year, the UN released a list of children’s rights violators and did not include Israel, despite an outcry over the death of more than 500 children during the Gaza war the year before.

He also said the report overlooked Saudi Arabia’s role in reinstating “legitimacy” in Yemen.

The report was released on Thursday by the office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. It slammed both the Arab coalition and militia forces for a “very large number of violations” including “attacks on schools and hospitals”.

Since March last year, the Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Iranian-backed Houthi militia and forces allied to deposed leader Ali Abdullah Saleh in a bid to put the government of internationally recognised President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi back in power.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2016