Recent Report showed that Houthis forcefully employed more than 10,000 children in Yemen since 2014
According to a latest report, the Iran-backed militant group has used schools and educational facilities to attract minors for recruitment, and the Houthi militia in Yemen has powerfully recruited 10,300 children in Yemen since 2014.
In a report published on Friday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and the SAM for Rights and Liberties stated that the Houthis use complex patterns to powerfully recruit children and put them in hostile areas under its control in Yemen.
The report released on February 12 to mark the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers (also known as Red Hand Day) indicated that the group uses an education system that incites violence and teaches the group’s ideology through special lectures inside the official educational facilities to fill students with extremist ideas and encourage them to join the fight to support the group’s military actions.
In the past three years, the Houthis have been making an open and obligatory campaign to recruit children. Specially, the Houthis have opened 52 training camps for thousands of adolescents and children in Saada, Sanaa, al-Mahwit, Hodeidah, Tihama, Hajjah and Dhamar, stated the report. Also, the Houthis have precisely targeted children 10 years old or more.
According to a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the report published on Friday comes when the United States would formally remove the Iran-backed Houthi militia and its leaders from its terror lists following week.
Indeed, the Houthis have been increasing their terror assaults on Saudi Arabia in the past week, declaring their responsibility for a drone assault on a civilian airplane at Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport on Thursday and launching bomb-laden drones and a ballistic missile interrupted by the Arab Coalition.
Besides, the most recent reports about child soldiers being recruited by the Houthis showed that the Houthis force children into ideological programs before sending them to military training camps to attend a one-month course. Houthi child soldiers are then sent to battlefronts to participate in direct clashes, laying mines and guarding military points.
Furthermore, one child, 14 and known as H.A, revealed in the report his experience on fighting for the Houthis in Nihm: I was assigned with loading the guns and transporting them with foodstuffs to high, rugged areas. It was hard and exhausting. I used to get beaten and reprimanded when I arrived late. I cried a lot during those nights, fearing for my life and for missing my mother, father and brothers.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, child recruitment is a war crime. Anas Jerjawi, Euro-Med Monitor MENA Regional Director, said: What is more troubling is not only the inclusion of children in military operations but feeding their simple minds with extremist ideas and filling them with hate speech and violence, and thus creating future extremists who may not be easily controlled given the huge number that the group recruits or aims to recruit in the future.
