TEHRAN – The Iranian High Council for Human Rights has criticized UNICEF for failing to denounce the US-Israeli crimes against Iranian children during the recent aggression.
Nasser Seraj, the secretary of the High Council, has urged Catherine Russell, the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, to strongly and unequivocally condemn the illegal US-Israeli strikes that targeted Iranian children and organize immediate psychological, medical, and educational support for the affected kids.
“Undoubtedly, silence and inaction in the face of these crimes will weaken the credibility and status of international institutions and will be recorded in the memory of the international community,” Seraj said in a letter to Russell, Press TV reported.
Meanwhile, Seraj said that during the imposed war, which began on February 28, the Zionist regime and the United States directly hit civilian targets, killing and injuring thousands of Iranian citizens, many of them children.
More than 380 children were martyred during the war, including seven under the age of one, 255 between one and 12, and 121 between 12 and 18, while 2,115 children were wounded, including 70 under the age of two, he added.
The rights official also noted that indiscriminate US-Israeli attacks struck residential areas across Iran, as well as schools, scientific centers, universities, business premises, manufacturing plants, health and service centers, railways, bridges, roads, transportation centers, border terminals, and planes carrying humanitarian and medical aid.
On the first day of the criminal aggression, he said, a primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was deliberately targeted, killing 73 boys, 47 girls, 26 teachers, 7 parents, a school bus driver, and a pharmacy technician at the clinic next to the school.
“Surprisingly, UNICEF has merely expressed concern instead of condemning this crime, which is unprecedented in all wars of the civilized world over the past few centuries. This is while protecting the rights of children and defending their lives and human dignity are at the forefront of UNICEF’s goals and missions,” Seraj said.
US-Israeli strikes against civilians, he said, violate Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the UN Charter that prohibits any “use or threat of use of force” in international relations.
The unlawful attacks, he said, are also in breach of international humanitarian law and the principles enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.
Last week, the High Council condemned the “organized massacre” of 344 Iranian students and teachers during the recent illegal war of aggression waged by the United States and the Israeli regime against the country.
In a statement released on Monday, the council expressed “deep regret and abhorrence” over the enemies’ criminal strikes on more than 80 schools, high schools, and educational centers in various Iranian provinces that martyred a total of 344 innocent students and teachers and injured hundreds more.
“The deliberate targeting of students and teachers in school environments not only blatantly violates Article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child but also constitutes ‘organized massacre’ and ‘terrorizing the civilian population,’ aimed at paralyzing the education system and instilling fear and terror among Iranian families,” it added.
The rights body also said that during the war, the aggressor regimes targeted 30 universities and higher education centers across Iran, destroying 154 scientific sites and killing five prominent professors and more than 60 university students.
It said that US-Israeli attacks on schools and universities constitute a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, a clear case of war crime, and a breach of multiple human rights principles, particularly the rights of the child.
“These actions are in stark contradiction to fundamental regulations, including Article 52 of the First Additional Protocol to the Four Geneva Conventions (1977), which mandates absolute protection for civilian and educational facilities; Paragraph 2 of Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which designates intentional attacks on educational buildings—upon fulfillment of other conditions—as war crimes; as well as the 1954 Hague Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989),” it said.
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