Yemen: Houthi launches new recruitment campaign to create children’s army
Despite the international truce and warnings, the Houthi group in Yemen is committing relentless violations. Killings, kidnappings, arrests, and child recruitment continue, in addition to a dramatic increase in the imposition of illegal sanctions on citizens exhausted by poverty and hunger.
Conscription
The Houthi militia recently launched a forced recruitment campaign to mobilize more fighters to its ranks despite a UN truce in place since April, and the Houthi militia has deployed recruitment offices in areas it controls, with the aim of mobilizing young people and children and training them to take up arms against the Yemeni people.
Private sources revealed the Houthis’ recruitment of youth, saying: “The Houthis are taking five young men from every street or neighborhood for recruitment, and then integrating them into military parades in a number of Sanaa districts, as these activities come as part of the general mobilization campaign”.
The Houthis have used schools and mosques to train new recruits, and in a report published by the Associated Press, they confirmed the Houthi group’s continued “recruitment of children as young as 10 years into the ranks of terrorist militia” in Yemen.
Children’s Army
The US agency said: The Houthi militia in Sanaa recently celebrated the graduation of a new batch of military personnel, called “The Great Misery” group, numbering “3,00” members. The Houthi militia organizes annual contests for students at schools in a number of governorates under the group’s control, aiming to recruit.
During a meeting in Riyadh with UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg, Chairman of the Presidential Command Council Rashad al-Alimi warned that the Houthi group’s military build-up and general mobilization continue to pose a serious threat to the future of the announced truce.
Earlier this month, the UN accused the Houthis of continuing to recruit children despite signing a memorandum of understanding with them to stop these abuses and begin releasing children under the age of 18 in its ranks.
Money or kidnapping
The Houthi militia exploits the low economic conditions in Yemen in order to recruit young people in return for lucrative monthly salaries. On the other hand, it abducts children whose families refuse to hand them over to the militias. This explains the enforced disappearance of more than 10,000 Yemeni children, according to sources. The Houthis use mosques and schools as centers for the brainwashing of children during the summer vacation period, in order to complete the ideological mobilization process with the extremist and violent ideology of the group, through the adoption of various means of incitement and hatred.
The Houthis have recently inaugurated a number of summer centers in various Yemeni governorates, despite local and international warnings to the Houthis, culminating in an agreement with the UN last April, according to the media affiliated with the Iran-backed group.
