September Net

Since the Houthi militia has been taking control of the Yemeni capital Sana’a, it has not stopped recruiting children, indifferent to international norms and laws.

International laws and norms criminalize the recruitment of children, considering it a serious violation of children’s rights, and a crime against humanity. But the Houthi militia, in five years of the coup, chose to murder childhood and send children to death.

During the past year, the Houthi militia organized sectarian intellectual courses in more than 3,000 summer centers in Sana’a and elsewhere. Summer courses like this aim to twist children’s minds, kill innocence, and induce them to join the fighting fronts.

Za’afran Zayed, director of the Yemeni Women Empowerment Foundation, at a seminar organized by the Yemeni Coalition for Independent Women via video communication, spoke about the physical and sexual violence suffered by children in the Houthi militia-controlled areas, noting that the militia is taking advantage of summer activities, to distort children’s minds through sectarian courses.

The political activist, Dr. Wissam Basendawa, indicated that the Houthi militia is exploiting the population, through their material needs. So, the militias take their children from schools, and join them in sectarian courses, and then they sent to the battlefronts, without informing their families.