Children, Not Soldiers

The "Children, Not Soldiers" report is one of the activities of the Monitoring and Documentation project for the recruitment of children in Yemen. This report is the fruit of six months of monitoring and documentation work carried out by 10 monitors affiliated with the Rasd Coalition in parallel with an advocacy campaign aimed at highlighting violations of child recruitment, educating heads of families about the risks embedded in this phenomenon, and taking part alongside the concerned authorities to end child recruitment.

The report shows that Yemeni children have been subjected to widespread violations of their rights guaranteed by international conventions due to the conflict, including changing their beliefs and national identity, forced recruitment, sexual exploitation and other violations that may fall under human trafficking.

During the reporting (project) period, the field team of the Rasd Coalition documented 248 incidents of recruitment and exploitation of children in 10 Yemeni governorates: (Sana'a, Hodeidah, Amran, Marib, Sa’adah, Dhamar, Ibb, Aden, Hajjah, and Al-Mahweet).

The findings of the report show that Ibb governorate ranks the highest governorate as far as child recruitment is concerned with 55 child soldiers, followed by Amran with 46 child soldiers. Ten cases have been selected to be presented in the report to substantiate its findings.

The report concludes that the Houthi armed group was the most prominent in recruiting children, recruiting 231 children. The other parties to the conflict have also been engaged in child recruitment, but at a limited scale. The Yemeni government has recruited 9 children, while 8 others have been recruited by paramilitary formations that are not aligned with the authority of the legitimate government.

The report indicates a surge in child recruitment in 2022, the year in which the Houthi group signed the plan to end child recruitment with the United Nations, and the International Campaign to End Child Recruitment was launched by the internationally recognized government and the United Nations Office in Yemen.

The report shows that 238 children have been recruited by coercive means, whereas 10 children have been recruited through intimidation. The parties to the conflict have used various ways to influence children, including handing salaries to 43 children to recruit them; joining cultural orientation classes/courses helped recruit 26 children; 41 children have been recruited after they have been moved to camps, 8 others have been recruited without knowing what was meant of them, 6 have been lured into joining military ranks by handing them weapons, 3 have been pushed by their families, 7 have been recruited at security checkpoints. Although the motives of 98 child soldiers remain unknown, it is believed that many of them have been affected by economic factors or the media and educational curricula.

The findings of the analysis of the documented incidents show that the largest number of recruits died during the hostilities. The report documented the death of 142 child soldiers, 82 children are still serving in the military ranks, 13 children returned to their homes, five others detained by other parties and the fate of four children is unknown.