The Houthis recruit African refugee children into closed camps
English - Tuesday 06 June 2023 الساعة 07:18 pm
Aden, NewsYemen:
The Houthi militia - the Iranian arm in Yemen - is carrying out a recruitment campaign for African refugee children in Sana'a, which is under its control.
Two human rights sources told NewsYemen that the Houthi militia lured dozens of African refugees residing in Sana'a to summer centers and then transferred them to closed training camps.
The two sources explained that the recruits are of Somali and Ethiopian nationalities, and most of them are children and adolescents, noting that the Houthi recruitment campaign includes all ages.
The Houthis took advantage of the long truce to rearrange their military ranks by mobilizing, recruiting, training and arming them in preparation for the resumption of fighting.
The past months witnessed an increase in the recruitment of African children by the Houthis, in the past months, preparing them in isolated camps, raising them intellectually on jihad and loyalty to the leader of the group, and training them physically to bear arms.
The Houthi militia is trying to benefit from the experiences of terrorist organizations in Africa, which have largely used children in armed conflicts and suicide attacks.
The "Boko Haram" movement, classified as terrorist, used more than 135 children to carry out terrorist operations on Nigerian army camps and villages.
Earlier, the international group of experts on Yemen confirmed, in a report to the Security Council, that the civil war in Yemen created human trafficking networks and that the Houthis took advantage of this situation by forming supply chains from the turbulent Horn of Africa to the civil war in Yemen.
