Children used as soldiers, threatened with war trauma: HRW, Amnesty warn
Displaced Iraqi children wait for food trucks at a newly constructed United Nations refugee camp.
“ Armed groups in Iraq affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party have recruited boys and girls,” HRW said in a report Thursday. “In two cases. the armed groups abducted or seriously abused children who tried to leave their forces.”
It said it had documented 29 cases in northern Iraq in which Kurdish and Yezidi children were recruited by the Kurdistan Workers Party’s armed wing, PKK, and its Yezidi affiliate, the Shingal Resistance Units.
“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.”
In turn, Amnesty International’s report shed light on the psychological plight of children caught in fighting between IS and Iraqi government forces seeking to liberate the city of Mosul.
“Children caught in the crossfire of the brutal battle for Mosul have seen things that no one, of any age, should ever see. I met children who have not only sustained horrific wounds but have also seen their relatives and neighbours decapitated in mortar strikes, torn to shreds by car bombs or mine explosions, or crushed under the rubble of their homes,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser, who returned from a 17-day mission to northern Iraq.
“War-wounded children then find themselves in hospitals overflowing with patients, or in camps for displaced people, where dire humanitarian conditions make their physical and psychological recovery even more difficult. Many others remain trapped in areas where the fighting is raging. There is an urgent need for the Iraqi authorities and their international partners in the battle for Mosul to set up better care, rehabilitation and protection systems for affected civilians. Looking after civilian victims, particularly the most vulnerable, should be an absolute priority – not an afterthought.”