Civil war in Yemen. Thousands of children drawn into armed conflict

3 hours ago

Yemen marks 14 years since the start of the civil war, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and made millions of residents refugees. Against the backdrop of a new wave of conflict escalation, human rights advocates and international organizations are expressing alarm over the mass involvement of minors in hostilities on both sides of the confrontation.

One such story was shared by the publication Middle East Eye, telling the tale of seventeen-year-old teenager Ibrahim. The young man took up his father's assault rifle to defend his native village from the Houthis alongside his older relatives. The teenager emphasizes that he does not tie his future to the army and dreams of training as an auto mechanic, but the harsh reality deprives children of prospects for a peaceful life. As the authors of a UN report note, the main factors drawing teenagers into the war remain the need for self-defense and total poverty.

According to a report by the UN Secretary-General, from 2021 to 2023 alone, 564 cases of recruitment of minors aged 8 to 17 were documented. Of these, 345 cases are attributed to the Houthis, and 210 to government forces and their allies. In 293 cases, children directly participated in combat, with 27 of them not even reaching the age of fifteen. In turn, the Yemeni military officially denies the presence of children in regular units: Colonel Abdul Basit al-Bahr, in a comment to the BBC, stated that the recruitment of minors is strictly prohibited, and isolated cases are explained by children merely accompanying their fathers at positions.

The human rights organization SAM provides even more massive figures: from 2014 to February 2023, 11,310 children were drawn into armed groups, with 6,269 of them being between 8 and 11 years old. The head of the organization, Tawfik al-Hamidi, emphasized that when a family loses its income, small payments or food rations from militants become a matter of physical survival for a child.

According to an investigation by Al Jazeera television, teenagers are often promised weapons, a one-month training course, and a monthly allowance of 50,000 Yemeni rials (about 94 dollars). According to UN estimates for 2026, over 22 million Yemeni residents are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, and 5.2 million people remain internally displaced, which only worsens the child rights protection crisis.