Health Attacks in
Afghanistan Are Sometimes For
More Service, New Yemen Report
Slated for April
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
March 6 – The attacks on medical
facilities in Afghanistan
include the Taliban taking a
doctor hostage in order to
demand more services in more
places, it emerged at a UN
press conference by the
Watchlist group on March 6.
Inner City Press asked
Watchlist's Research Officer
Christine Monaghan if this
particular form of attack might
show a need for greater outreach
by the groups running the
clinics. Her answer included
that because the lines of
control are changing, issues
of impartial service delivery
arise. Ahmad Khalid Fahim of
the Swedish Committee for
Afghanistan recounted the Taliban
urging the relocation of a
clinic from an area next to a
Governor's office to territory
they controlled.
In last
April Watchlist will release a
similar report on Yemen, the
group's Executive Director Eva
Smets told Inner City Press,
presumably in advance of
Secretary General Antonio Guterres'
(but no longer Leila
Zerrougui's) annual report on
Children on Armed Conflict.
How much new detail will there
be on attacks by the Saudi-led
Coalition which Ban Ki-moon
had dropped from the CAAC
Annex? Watch this site.
Back on March 1,
abuses against children in
Yemen, Burundi,
the Central African Republic
and Myanmar were raised to the
Watchlist group, and later to
the UN, by Inner City Press on
March 1. Watchlist, one of its
two speakers from Human Rights
Watch, diplomatically declined
to opine when Inner City Press
asked if the Saudi led
Coalition was behind the
non-renewal of Special Adviser
Leila Zerrougui's contract.
But why wasn't she present at
the Saudi foreign minister's
recent meeting on the 38th
floor, and the UN's holdover
spokesman Stephane Dujarric
has refused to say why.
After
Watchlist's press conference
on March 1, at the noon
briefing an hour later Inner
City Press asked the UN's
Dujarric, transcript now here:
Inner City Press:
In this room, at 10:30,
Watchlist, the group about
Children and Armed Conflict,
were pretty critical of the
removal of the Saudi-led
Coalition from the Children
and Armed Conflict list,
basically urging the new
Secretary-General to put them
back on and also urging him to
take up, for the first time,
Burundi as a violator of
children's rights, including
on killing and maiming.
So I wanted to know, are you
aware of these calls?
Spokesman: Well, I'm
aware of it because I was
listening to it as I was…
Inner City Press: So what do
you think of it?
Spokesman: …preparing
for the briefing. I
think it's always important to
hear from NGOs
(non-governmental
organizations) who are heavily
involved in these things, and
the drafting of the report is
under way and should be out
not too long.
Inner City Press: Is
there any consideration of
including the various
peacekeepers in the Central
African Republic, including
the French force and the UN
forces…?
Spokesman: I will urge
you to wait for the
report.
We'll be here - unless
Dujarric has his way with what
he tried to do in 2016, get
Inner City Press kicked
out not only of the UN Press
Briefing Room but the UN
as a whole. (HRW did
nothing - in
fact, its UN lobbyist,
in a prior capacity, twice tried to
get Inner City Press thrown
out, misusing
the US Digital Millennium
Copyright Act to try to
cover up one of the attempts,
here.
See also this,
gotten under FOIA.)
Inner City
Press asked the Watchlist
speaker about Burundi, video
here, and after its
Periscope, about the group's
generally useful report's
failure to specifically
mention the plight of Rohingya
children in Myanmar. On that,
see here
(Arakan Project), and
watch this site.
***
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