Human Rights Watch: Iraqi militias are recruiting children to fight ISIS

AP Photo/Osama Sami

As Iraqi Security Forces prepare for a major offensive to push the terrorist group ISIS out of Mosul, the largest city that the militants control in the country, some government-backed militias have started recruiting children to fight, a human-rights group said on Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said in a report that Sunni militias receiving support from the Iraqi government have recruited males younger than 18 from at least one camp for displaced people inside the country.

The children were taken from the camp and driven to a town near Mosul, Human Rights Watch said. Iraqi Security Forces, with support from the US, are expected to retake Mosul from ISIS by the end of 2016.

There now appears to be child soldiers on all sides of the conflict. ISIS is known for forcing children to fight, and Shiite militias, which likely will not be part of the battle for Mosul, are also reportedly recruiting kids.

"The recruitment of children as fighters for the Mosul operation should be a warning sign for the Iraqi government," said Bill Van Esveld, senior children's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The government and its foreign allies need to take action now, or children are going to be fighting on both sides in Mosul."

Van Esveld also called on the US, which supports the Iraqi government in its fights against ISIS, to ensure that child soldiers are not part of the Mosul battle.

"The US should press the Iraqi government to ensure that the troops they are supporting don't have fighters under 18 in their ranks," he said. "The battle for Mosul should not be fought with children on the front lines."

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that militias would arrive at refugee camps and cart off recruits in trucks. Several of the recruits were reportedly under 18.

Shiite militias, generally regarded as some of the most well-equipped and powerful fighters on the battlefield in Iraq, are generally excluded from fighting in Sunni cities like Mosul. Therefore, Iraqi Security Forces have struggled to build up forces big enough to take on ISIS in these areas.

The recruits from refugee camps were reportedly meant to reinforce the Sunni militias near the front lines of the fighting, according to Human Rights Watch. An aid worker told the organization that the Iraqi government had approved the plan.

Witnesses whom Human Rights Watch spoke with said that the children, many of whom are teenagers, volunteered to fight for the militias. But the UN still prohibits the use of child soldiers, including those who volunteer.

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