Syria has criticized the United Nation's “complete disregard for facts” in a recent report on the situation of children inside Syria.
During a Security Council session on “Children and Armed Conflict” held on Thursday, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said the report on Syria overlooks the true roots behind the crisis, and abstains from recognizing the role of the countries in aiding the spread of terrorism and multiplying its grave impact on Syria’s children.
Jafaari criticized the “suspicious” disregard by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Leila Zerrougui and her office of the dozens of documented correspondences and letters sent by the Syrian government providing evidence against the many allegations included in the recent report.
Jafaari referred to the lists of thousands of incidents – including the date, place and names documented, where children were killed at the hands of terrorists – which were sent to Zerrougui’s office since the beginning of the crisis.
Despite the Syrian government’s close cooperation with Zerrougui and her office, not one of the documented incidents was observed in the report, said Jaafari.
“Whoever is in charge of writing those reports, they have turned into a tool in the hands of some influential member states of this international organization to smear the Syrian government’s image, ” Jaafari said.
This fact, he added, explains the “unjustified rejection” of a demand for listing the Israeli occupation in the report’s attachments as a party responsible for the killing of thousands of Palestinian children in occupied Palestine, and the suffering of Syrian children under occupation in the Syrian Golan.
The Syrian ambassador dismissed all attempts at “demonizing” the Syrian government for terrorism while ignoring the role of countries backing terrorism, referring to camps in Syria’s neighboring countries for the recruitment of children as young as four, which “have taken unprecedented bloody forms”.
Jaafari cited video tapes published by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) showing children of no more than 10 years of age carrying out mass executions against captives through shooting or decapitation.
Jaafari also highlighted the terrorists’ approach of educating children in a Takfiri Wahhabi educational system and closing hundreds of government-run schools, converting buildings into bases and centers to store weapons and ammunition.
