The United Nations will add Israel and Hamas to a list of countries and armed groups that harm children when it publishes its annual report on children and armed conflict, citing the high toll the war in Gaza has taken on children, including murders. and mutilations. and hunger, U.N. officials said.
UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said the UN chief of staff called Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, on Friday to inform him that Israel would be on the list this year. “The call was a courtesy extended to newly listed countries,” Dujarric said, “to notify the countries and prevent leaks.”
Hamas, the armed group that ran Gaza before the war, will be named in the report because its fighters kidnapped and killed Israeli children when they attacked Israel on Oct. 7, a U.N. official said. Armed groups that harm children in conflict, such as the Taliban and Boko Haram, are routinely mentioned in the annual report.
The news of Israel’s inclusion on the list further strained an already deteriorating relationship between Israel and the United Nations.
Erdan called the measure “an immoral decision that aids terrorism and rewards terrorists.” He made a video recording of the phone call and posted parts of it on social media site X.
Dujarric, the UN spokesman, called the release of a recording of the phone call “shocking and unacceptable and something I have never seen in my 25 years of service in this organization.”
The annual report is prepared by the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict under the mandate of the General Assembly and the Security Council. The report will be presented to Council members next Friday and made public on June 18, Dujarric said. The Council will hold an open debate on the report’s conclusions later this month.
During the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, gunmen kidnapped children, some of them toddlers and babies, and held them hostage in Gaza. There were also children among the approximately 1,200 Israelis and foreigners killed.
Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign and ground war in Gaza have killed at least 36,000 people, Gaza health officials say, a large number of them women and children. The United Nations has said children in Gaza also face famine and starvation because Israel has restricted humanitarian aid. Many children have also lost limbs or been seriously injured in other ways.
Majed Bamya, Palestine’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said in a post on “