Iraq: Armed Groups Using Child Soldiers | WPN World People News

Armed groups in Iraq affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party have recruited boys and girls, Human Rights Watch said on Dec 22. In two cases the armed groups abducted or seriously abused children who tried to leave their forces. The groups should urgently demobilize children, investigate abuses, pledge to end child recruitment, and appropriately penalize commanders who fail to do so.

Commemoration monument for fallen YBŞ/HPG fighters in Sinjar.

Human Rights Watch documented 29 cases in northern Iraq in which Kurdish and Yezidi children were recruited by two armed groups, the People’s Defense Forces (Hêzên Parastina Gel, or HPG) and the Shingal Resistance Units (Yekîneyên Berxwedana Şingal, or YBŞ). The HPG is the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is known by its initials, the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê). The YBŞ, a militia from the Yezidi religious community, is also affiliated with the PKK.

“The PKK should categorically denounce the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and commanders in affiliated armed groups should know that the recruitment and use of children under age 15 constitute war crimes,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Boys and girls should be with their families and going to school, not used as means to military ends.”

Children under age 15 affiliated with both groups told Human Rights Watch that they have participated in fighting, while others said they had staffed checkpoints or cleaned and prepared weapons. Even if the armed groups do not send children into direct combat, they place them at risk by training them in areas that Turkey has attacked with airstrikes in its conflict with the PKK, such as Iraq’s Qandil mountain area.

The recruitment or use of children under 15 is a war crime. Under international law, non-state armed groups like the HPG and YBŞ must not, under any circumstances, recruit children under 18, or use them in hostilities. Recruitment of children by armed groups is prohibited by international law, even if the children “volunteer.”

The HPG should investigate and hold accountable those responsible for abducting or otherwise abusing children, and the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which has paid salaries to YBŞ forces, should pressure the group to demobilize all child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said.

The HPG, along with other Kurdish armed groups broadly aligned with the PKK, operates in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and is fighting Turkish and non-state armed groups including the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). The PKK-aligned groups have trained and supported the YBŞ, which gained recruits after the HPG helped Yezidis flee ISIS massacres of Yezidi civilians in Sinjar in August 2014.

Human Rights Watch documented nine cases of children used by the HPG; in four cases, the child had left the HPG. The father of a Kurdish boy from the city of Halabja in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq said his son left school at 15 to join the group in early 2016, and that its officials had repeatedly refused to acknowledge the boy’s whereabouts. The father showed Human Rights Watch researchers a video, apparently filmed by the HPG, showing the boy at an unknown location, in uniform with an assault rifle, in which he encouraged others to join the group. “I just want to contact him, just let him call me to say he hasn’t been shot,” the father said.

Twenty boys and five girls from the Halabja area have joined and remained with PKK-affiliated forces since 2013, and another 38 children joined but returned home, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Human Rights Commission office in Halabja.

In Sardashti, a community in the Yezidi region of Sinjar, residents described an incident in February when HPG fighters badly beat a 13-year-old girl in their ranks after she argued with a commander. When the girl, who had a broken leg, tried to escape, the fighters tracked her down and took her back, even after she threatened to jump off the roof, residents said.

A Yezidi boy at the Bersive 1 displaced persons camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, said he was 14 when he joined the group in 2014, and that he fought in Sinjar and in Syria until July 2016. He said he saw “many” other children during his time with the group and recalled that one 16-year-old boy was shot in the leg during fighting in western Sinjar. “There was a rule that if you were under 18 you could not fight,” the boy said. “But the fighters don’t care about the rules.”

In Khanasoor, a town in Sinjar, Human Rights Watch met a 14-year-old girl from Turkey who said she had joined the group in Syria two years ago, and received military training there. She had recently moved to Sinjar and joined the YBŞ “as a fighter,” although they had refused to allow her to participate in combat.

Human Rights Watch documented 20 cases of children recruited or used by the YBŞ, including 10 cases in which researchers spoke to the children. In Khanasoor, Human Rights Watch observed the YBŞ using the Ta`meem Boys’ Secondary School as a military barracks. Among the uniformed recruits there, four said they were under 18, including one who was 14 and had volunteered two years before, when he was in fifth grade. The recruits said the YBŞ received salaries from Iraqi authorities in Baghdad that were only supposed to be paid to fighters age 18 and older, but that the group collected and pooled the money and used it to pay children.

Residents of Khanasoor also said that the HPG had recruited children from the Martyr Khairy school, which teachers said is run by the PKK using a curriculum from Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Syria.

Children suspected of joining PKK-affiliated forces have been arrested and abused by the Asayish security forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the official ruling body of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which opposes the PKK. One of the boys at the secondary school being used as a barracks in Khanasoor said that he joined the YBŞ at 15, after the ISIS massacres of Yezidi civilians in Sinjar in August 2014, and that the Asayish arrested and beat him when he went to visit his family at a camp for displaced Yezidis in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. “The first time they arrested me, the Asayish, they held me for five days, they beat me with their hands and said that if I left the camp again, they would arrest my family,” he said. Three Yezidi children or their families told Human Rights Watch that Kurdish regional authorities had evicted the families from camps because their children had joined PKK-affiliated forces.

Kurdistan Regional Government authorities should treat children suspected of involvement with the armed groups primarily as victims of abuse, not as criminals, in accordance with international norms on child soldiers set out in the Paris Principles of 1997. The authorities should not penalize the families of suspected child recruits.

The HPG pledged to end recruitment of children under 16 on October 5, 2013, when commanders signed a “Deed of Commitment” with Geneva Call, an international nongovernmental organization that promotes adherence to the laws of war by armed groups. The group’s commanders said it would “make all efforts to ensure that all 16-18 year olds are separated and kept away from combat zones.” PKK officials did not respond to a letter from Human Rights Watch asking if the HPG has penalized commanders for violating these internal rules, and other questions including the minimum age of recruitment.

The YBŞ should demobilize any children in their ranks, end all recruitment of children under age 18, and punish recruiters, Human Rights Watch said.

The groups should end the military use of schools, consistent with the HGP’s pledge in signing the “Deed of Commitment.” Iraq should join the states that have agreed to implement international guidelines for protecting schools from military use during armed conflict.

Human Rights Watch has also documented the recruitment or use of children by Sunni and Shia Arab armed groups fighting in Iraq, including militias in the battle to retake Mosul, and by armed groups fighting in Syria.

“Kurdish and Yezidi communities in Iraq have suffered unbearable horrors from war, but there is simply no excuse for using children to fight even if they are volunteering to join up,” Coursen-Neff said. “The PKK should take immediate steps to root out all child recruitment, refuse to accept child volunteers, and make amends to the families and children who have suffered.”

Source:Human Rights Watch