Video - Pre-Schoolers with Toy Guns Parade in West Bank Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony

Related: Both Israel And Hamas Won’t Be Included On U.N. Children’s Rights Blacklist....no word on ISIS.

Both Israel And Hamas Won’t Be Included On U.N. Children’s Rights Blacklist....no word on ISIS.

Both Israel And Hamas Won’t Be Included On U.N. Children’s Rights Blacklist....no word on ISIS.(Matzav).

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has decided to leave both Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas off the list of countries and organizations that harm children, despite a recommendation by a U.N. official.

Nevertheless, in a report, Ban urged Israel “to take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect children, to prevent the killing and maiming of children, and to respect the special protections afforded to schools and hospitals.”
In a report issued last month, the U.N. special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, recommended the blacklisting of the Israel Defense Forces for allegedly regularly causing harm to children. The designation would have placed the IDF in the same group as terrorist organizations such as Islamic State, Boko Haram, and the Taliban.

At the time, the Israeli Foreign Ministry called out the world body for hypocrisy.
“Israel-haters are threatening the United Nations and no one is complaining about them,” a senior Foreign Ministry official said. “It’s a scandal and it’s hypocrisy.

There are unfortunately a lot of situations in which children are killed in zones of conflict and yet no one dares put them on the list. Do you know how many kids the Saudis have killed while bombing Yemen? I want to see the U.N. secretary-general’s Algerian envoy dare to include Saudi Arabia on the list.”

JNS.ORG

HRW don't look now but ....your Antisemitic side is showing; HRW Asks U.N. to Put Israel on Child Rights Violators List.

ISIL Not mentioned but, HRW Asks U.N. to Put Israel on Child Rights Violators List.(Naharnet).

Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to add Israel to an annual "List of Shame" of children's rights violators, after more than 500 children were killed in the war in Gaza last year.

The U.S.-based rights group called on Ban to resist pressure from Israel and the United States to keep the Israeli Defense Forces off the list due to be released next week.

"Secretary General Ban can strengthen child protection in war by compiling his list based on facts, not political pressure," said Philippe Bolopion, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch is also calling for the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to be included as well as armed groups in Pakistan, Thailand and India for serious violations including attacks on schools and the recruitment of child soldiers.

The current list has 51 groups including Boko Haram and Islamic State as well as the armed forces from eight countries such as Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

The 50-day conflict in Gaza last year killed 539 children, injured 2,956, and most Palestinians are now struggling with trauma and life-long disabilities, according to the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF. Hmmm......HRW don't look now but ....your Antisemitic side is showing.

UNICEF: Some 33 percent of Iranian Girls marry while underage.

Some 33 percent of Iranian Girls marry while underage. (Taz).

In its new report published on July 22, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned about prevalence of the child marriage around the world.

Worldwide, more than 700 million women alive today got married as children, the report said, underlining that more than 1 in 3 - or some 250 million - of them were married before the age of 15.

Almost half of all child brides worldwide live in South Asia; 1 in 3 are in India, the report remarked. Middle East and North Africa share 5 percent of women who were married before age 18.

The latest statistics released by Iran's National Organization for Civil Registration indicates that over one third of women who married in the nine-month period from March to Dec. 2013 were under 19.

Number of girls under the age of 19 who were married in the mentioned period stood at 208,859, with 30,956 of these girls were married under age 15.

The organization put the total number of marriages in Iran at 579,871 during the period.

The official statistics also show that 829,968 marriages were registered in Iran during the 12-month period from March 2012 to March 2013; of that amount 305,770 were child brides (36.8 percent).

However some experts believe that the official figures do not tell the whole story, while in some regions underage marriages are not registered.

Early in Dec. 2013, Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted Iranian demography expert, Shahla Kazemipour as saying in some regions underage marriages are not registered due to brides' under legal age and it is only after a pregnancy that steps are taken to register the marriage.

It should be noted that Iran's domestic laws permit marriage under 18 however the Islamic Republic is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids that.

According to the article 1041 of the country's Civil Code, "marriage of girls before the age of 13 and boys before the age of 15 is contingent upon the permission of the guardian and upon the condition of the child's best interests as determined by a competent court."

Some Iranian human rights activists recently wrote a letter to the UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay calling on her to investigate the issue of marriages of young and underage girls in Iran.

UNICEF in its recent report warns about the future of the girls who marry underage. "They are not only denied their childhood, they are often socially isolated - cut off from family and friends and other sources of support - with limited opportunities for education and employment," the report said.