On August 27, 2024, the Revolutionary Youth, affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), kidnapped the 13-year-old girl Lia Rakan Al-Nouh from the village of Talilon in the countryside of Darbasiya, in the rural area of Al-Hasakah Governorate, and took her to forced recruitment camps. Despite her family’s efforts to search for and reach her, they have been unsuccessful to this day.
A day later, on August 28, 2024, they kidnapped the 13-year-old boy Akid Khaled Muslim from the village of Ziyara in the countryside of Ain al-Arab (Kobani) in Aleppo Governorate and took him to recruitment camps.
On August 2, 2024, they kidnapped the 17-year-old girl Maryam Adham Ibo from the Shahba area in the countryside of Aleppo Governorate for recruitment.
In the last week of July 2024, two children were kidnapped in Raqqa Governorate: Mohammad Abdullah Al-Ahmad, 15 years old, who was kidnapped from February 23 Street in the city of Raqqa, and Aziz Alaa Sawiri, 14 years old. Two children were also kidnapped in the city of Manbij in the countryside of Aleppo: Ahmed Firas Al-Jasim, 13 years old, and the boy Majd Al-Din Mohammed Al-Mustafa, 14 years old.
On July 16, 2024, the 14-year-old girl Sidra Hussein Abdul Hanan was kidnapped in the Shahba area. She comes from the village of Bahja in the district of Bulbul in the countryside of Afrin and lives with her family in displacement camps in the Shahba area.
The abduction and recruitment of children by the SDF militia is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Article 38 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities, and shall ensure the protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict.” The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, adopted in 2000, emphasizes in most of its provisions the criminalization of the use of children in armed conflicts and obligates states to refrain from recruiting children under the age of eighteen, as stated in Article 2: “States Parties shall ensure that persons who have not attained the age of eighteen years are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.” The 26th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, held in December 1995, recommended that parties to a conflict take all feasible steps to ensure that children under the age of eighteen do not take part in hostilities. The International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, adopted in 1999, also prohibits the forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts.
The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) believes that the SDF militia and its affiliated Revolutionary Youth have systematically and continuously violated the agreement signed with the United Nations, known as the “Action Plan,” which was signed on July 1, 2019. This agreement commits to preventing and ending the recruitment of children under the age of 18. It was signed by the SDF’s general commander, Mazloum Abdi, Redur Khalil, the former spokesperson for the “Kurdish People’s Protection Units,” and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.
SHRC strongly condemns the continued abduction and recruitment of children by the SDF, and calls for an immediate halt to this practice, the release of all children recruited, their return to their families, compensation for them, and the prosecution of those responsible for these abductions and recruitment. It also demands an end to the threats against the families of the abducted who demand the return of their children and to stop the use of violence against them. SHRC calls on the states supporting the SDF to exert pressure on it to take real steps to end the forced recruitment of children and to respect the rules of international humanitarian law and the principles of international human rights law in the areas under its control. Furthermore, it calls on the UN Security Council to activate its Resolution 1612 of 2005, which established a special team under the Security Council on children and armed conflict to monitor the violations of children’s rights by the SDF and to hold the perpetrators accountable.
