Children's rights: the UN must put Israel on its blacklist

The Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations has called on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to place Israel on the list of perpetrators of grave violations of children's rights.

Riyad Mansour made this call on Tuesday, June 6, at the International Conference on the Protection of Children in Armed Conflict, which was held in Oslo, the Norwegian capital.

He said adding Israel's name to the UN's "list of shame", which includes governments and armed groups that commit grave violations of children's rights in conflict, would have a deterrent effect.

The Palestinian Ambassador to the UN further urged UN Member States to support this moral, political and legal measure against Israel, saying it is a necessary and important step towards protecting children's rights in conflict.

Based on this blacklist, the UN Security Council can consider sanctions against the parties that have committed these violations and ask them to sign and implement a UN action plan to end their violations in order to be removed from the list.

Mansour predicted that 2023 would be deadlier than the previous year in Palestine, citing the killing of more than 20 Palestinian children by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has called 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2006, with more than 40 Palestinian children killed.

On Monday, June 5, two-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Tamimi died a martyr's death in hospital four days after being shot in the head during a raid by Israeli soldiers in the village of Nabi Saleh, near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Mohammad is the youngest Palestinian to be killed by occupation forces in the occupied West Bank in recent years.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned the murder of Mohammad al-Tamimi as a "heinous crime against humanity" and demanded an urgent international investigation into this crime and other cases of infanticide in occupied Palestine.

"Israeli political and military officials and settlers must be held accountable to the full extent of the law," the Palestinian ministry added.