New York, June 16 (RHC)-- In New York, the Director of Child Rights of the organization Human Rights Watch, Jo Becker, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s inclusion of Israel on the UN’s list of countries that commit “grave violations against children” in armed conflict was “fully justified.”

Although the UN had already attributed 8,700 child casualties to Israel’s military between 2015 and 2022, “in 2023, the scale of the violations was apparently too large for the secretary-general to ignore,” Becker said in a statement.

Becker said the UN secretary-general had been criticized in the past for “omitting some parties from the ‘list of shame’ despite evidence of violations in UN reports.”  Now, the UN Security Council must “hold those responsible to account and make clear that children are off-limits in armed conflict”, she added.