An IDF drill in northern Israel. Photo: IDF.

JNS.org – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is spearheading a campaign to include the Israeli military on a UN blacklist of “grave violators of children’s rights” that includes terrorist groups like Islamic State and Boko Haram, according to a new report by the NGO Monitor watchdog group.

The report, which according to Fox News was presented to senior UN officials in recent weeks, illustrates how a UNICEF working group — composed mainly of radical organizations involved in the campaign to delegitimize Israel — plays a central role in anti-Israel blacklist efforts.

The NGO Monitor report shows how UNICEF opted to ignore violations of children’s rights by Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, when it admitted “the working group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information.”

The anti-Israel organizations behind the UNICEF working group have in recent years published false and misleading reports on the IDF’s arrest and purported abuse of Palestinian minors involved in attacks that were later entered into a UNICEF database, lending them legitimacy.

A number of these organizations, including Defense for Children International – Palestine, have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group.

In response to a query from NGO Monitor, UNICEF’s Palestinian territories branch did not deny that the organization has ties to terrorist groups, saying, “UNICEF has a clear policy that it does not fund…organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations.” Among thee organizations excluded from the world body’s terrorist list are Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP.

NGO Monitor stated that UNICEF’S reporting on Israel is “qualitatively different and more extreme than its reporting on other Middle East countries.” A UNICEF spokesperson told Fox News, “The monitoring and reporting process is led by a working group, which brings together U.N. agencies and international, Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. These organizations are selected based on their ability to regularly provide accurate, reliable, impartial and objective data on children affected by armed conflict.”