2,000 kids recruited by rebels died fighting, U.N. says

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. experts find in a new report that nearly 2,000 children recruited by Yemen’s Houthi rebels died on the battlefield from January 2020 to May 2021, and the Iranian-backed rebels continue to hold camps and courses encouraging youngsters to fight.

In the report to the U.N. Security Council circulated over the weekend, the experts said they investigated summer camps in schools and a mosque where the Houthis disseminated their ideology and sought to recruit children to fight in the seven-year war with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition.

“The children are instructed to shout the Houthi slogan ‘death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam,’” the four-member panel of experts said. “In one camp, children as young as 7 years of age were taught to clean weapons and evade rockets.”

The experts said they documented 10 cases where children were taken to fight after being told they would be enrolled in cultural courses or were already taking such courses, nine cases where humanitarian aid was provided or denied to families “solely on the basis whether their children participated in fighting or to teachers on the basis of whether they taught the Houthi curriculum,” and one case where sexual violence was committed against a child who underwent military training.

The panel said it received a list of 1,406 children recruited by the Houthis who died on the battlefield in 2020 and a list of 562 children recruited by the rebels who died on the battlefield between January and May 2021. “They were aged between 10 and 17 years old,” the experts said.

Yemen has been engulfed in civil war since 2014 when the Houthis took Sanaa, the capital, and much of the northern part of the country, forcing the government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia. A Saudiled coalition that included the United Arab Emirates and was backed at the time by the United States, entered the war months later, in 2015, seeking to restore the government to power.

The conflict has since become a regional proxy war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and fighters. The war has also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving millions suffering from food and medical care shortages.

In recent weeks, shifting front lines on the ground have resulted in escalating attacks following gains by UAE-backed forces in the contested province of Marib. Coalition air strikes followed two Houthi attacks inside the UAE using missiles and drones, killing three in strikes near the Abu Dhabi international airport.

The 303-page report said violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are “the norm rather than the exception” in the Yemen conflict, citing arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment “committed by all parties.”