Sixty-seventh General Assembly
Third Committee
14th & 15th Meetings (AM & PM)
18 October 2012
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/gashc4043.doc.htm \t _blank http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/gashc4043.doc.htm

 Excerpt from the UN Press Release 
MONIA ALSALEH ( Syria) reaffirmed her country’s commitment to the conventions it had ratified, stressing her Government would pursue dialogue with the Committee to meet guarantees outlined in the Convention.   Syria was party to eight conventions, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols.  Premeditated aggression and hostility was increasing from armed terrorist groups supported by foreign entities inside her country, with documented cases of pillaging and school destruction.  A school in the suburbs of Damascus recently was bombed by armed groups during its first few days.  Also, those groups were involving children under 18 years old in their activities.  The Government and the Minister for Health had pursued national plans to consolidate children’s health.  Vaccines for children had been provided through private institutions throughout the country.
 But Syria’s efforts to safeguard children’s rights were being impeded, due to the economy’s destruction.  Children were the first affected by illegal measures in all sectors, especially the health sector.  An embargo on the national bank made the provision of medicine to children difficult.  Further, the human rights situation in the Occupied Golan was dangerous, due to repressive Israeli practices that did not guarantee the rights enshrined in the Convention.  Bombs and mines planted by the Israeli entity had killed 227 children since October.  They were condemnable infringements.  She agreed with the United States delegate that children were being used as human shields, but that delegate did not note that terrorist armed groups, supported by States, including her own, were responsible…

Rights of reply  
Exercising her right of reply, the representative of Syria said that Israel’s representative had made “audacious” statements.  Instead of taking pride in Israel’s innovative educational programmes, the representative should have spoken about, among other things, the “racist” wall in the Golan or the two Syrian children killed by a landmine earlier this month while they were playing in a field in Golan.  She said that detention, massacres, pogroms and other numerous terrorist activities the “occupying power” had committed were other topics that could and should have been raised.