The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is undermining one of the U.N.’s most effective tools for holding wartime abusers to account: He has repeatedly omitted powerful governments from his annual list of shame for grave violations against children in armed conflict, ignoring the U.N.’s own evidence of abuse.
When the Security Council first requested the list in 2001, it was limited to governments recruiting and using child soldiers, but over the years the Security Council has expanded it to include military forces and armed groups that kill and maim children, commit acts of sexual violence, attack schools and hospitals, abduct children, and deny them humanitarian access. Many of the state and nonstate actors named—including the governments of Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria—are on the list for multiple violations.
