Security

Syrian Kurdish Revolutionary Youth Movement continuing recruitment of underage children: SOHR

According to the SOHR, the Revolutionary Youth Movement continues "attracting and luring minors to serve in its military ranks, blatantly violating human rights and international resolutions"

Kurdistan 24 2022/02/27 22:11

Kurds demonstrate outside UN offices in northeastern Syria against the recruitment of teenage girls into Kurdish militias (Photo: Delil souleiman/AFP)

Syria AANES SDF Revolutionary Youth Movement Child Soldiers

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor accused the Syrian Kurdish Revolutionary Youth Movement group of abducting a 13-year-old child in Kobani on Saturday.

The girl, known by her initials MF, was originally displaced from Deir Ballout village in Afrin countryside and relocated to Kobani, where she was living when she was allegedly abducted.

According to the SOHR, the Revolutionary Youth Movement continues "attracting and luring minors to serve in its military ranks, blatantly violating human rights and international resolutions that the Autonomous Administrations and Syria Democratic Forces have signed."

The human rights organization Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) revealed in a report published on Jan. 13 that the Revolutionary Youth Movement recruited 17 minors in northeastern Syria and Aleppo's northern countryside in October, November, and December 2021.

In cooperation with the SDF, the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (AANES) established the Office of Child Protection In Armed Conflicts in August 2020 after multiple claims that it was recruiting minors into its armed ranks.

The UN and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi also signed an action plan in June 2019 in Switzerland to restrict the practice.

On Feb. 17, SOHR reported that the Child Protection Office informed the father of Mohammed Azad Hasan, a minor recruited by the Revolutionary Youth Movement on Jan. 26, that the group refused to hand over the child.