The Yemeni Coalition for Monitoring Human Rights Violations reported that 1529 cases of recruitment of children by Houthi militias have been documented in several governorates, most of them in areas of a social and poor nature. They are attracted by militias without the knowledge of their parents or pressure on their parents.
This came during a seminar organized by the coalition at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva on the "recruitment of coup militias of Yemeni children", on the sidelines of the 35th session of the Human Rights Council, during which the human rights activist and human rights officer of the Monitoring and Documentation Unit of the Yemeni Coalition to monitor violations Riad Al-Dba'i presented a working paper that covered one of the six grave violations of the rights of child which is "child recruitment" that based its information on researches and practical field surveys to monitor child recruitment in Yemen from January 2016 to March 31, 2017.
Al-Deba'i reviewed the disastrous results of child recruitment in Yemen, pointing to the death of 424 children and injury of 61 others with permanent disability, noting that there are still 144 children who have been recruited so far in the ranks of the militias, stressing that their recruitment constitutes a war crime under the international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Source : SPA