Saudi Arabia invites UN team over child abuse blacklist
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Yemeni children stand outside a tent at a makeshift camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) after they were forced to flee their homes due to the Saudi war
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.
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