(Beirut) – The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran is currently conducting a campaign to recruit children as young as 12 to voluntarily join as “defenders of the homeland,” Human Rights Watch said today. Recruiting and using children for military purposes is a serious violation of children’s rights and a war crime when children are under 15 years old.
On March 26, an official from the IRGC’s 27th Mohammad Rasulullah Division in Tehran said a campaign titled “Defenders of the Homeland in Iran” had set the minimum recruitment age at 12. In the context of thousands of attacks by the United States and Israel across the country, these children would be at serious risk of death or injury if present at military facilities. Iranian authorities should end this campaign and prohibit all military and paramilitary forces in Iran from recruiting children under 18.
“There is no justification for an army recruitment campaign targeting children, let alone 12-year-olds,” said Bill Van Esveld, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Children’s Rights Division. “This is a simple fact: Iranian authorities seem willing to endanger children’s lives to have additional manpower.”
This campaign aims to recruit civilians to provide catering and medical services, distribute items, attend to damaged housing, and for security maintenance activities such as guarding checkpoints or participating in operational patrols and surveillance, and vehicle convoys, said Rahim Nadali, an IRGC official, in an interview with the Iranian news agency Defa Press. The recruitment campaign’s promotional poster features two children, a boy and a girl, alongside two adults, including a man in military uniform.
In a televised interview, Rahim Nadali said: “[Regarding] surveillance patrols and operations, several teenagers and young people have come to us repeatedly to express their desire to participate. Regarding the Basij [paramilitary force] checkpoints now seen in all cities, many young people and adolescents have expressed their desire to be present. Considering the ages of those who made these requests, we have set the [minimum] age limit at 12. This means that there are now children aged 12 and 13 who want to be present in this space.”
Candidates can register at mosques in Tehran that host Basij bases, according to Rahil Nadali and information provided on recruitment posters. The Basij force is under the command of the IRGC.
Over the past month, according to reports, the United States and Israel have carried out tens of thousands of airstrikes on numerous Basij and IRGC installations, and on several Basij checkpoints in Tehran, causing deaths and injuries among these forces.
Several children have already been victims of illegal attacks in Iran. Human Rights Watch estimated that an illegal attack on an Iranian elementary school in Minab on February 28, which killed dozens of schoolchildren and other civilians, should be investigated as a war crime. According to a preliminary report from the U.S. military, the United States is believed to be responsible for this attack. Human Rights Watch has called on Congress to hold special hearings on the U.S. military’s targeting practices.
Iran has been recruiting children under 18 into the Basij forces for several years. During the civil war in Syria, the IRGC recruited Afghan immigrant children living in Iran as child soldiers, sending them to Syria to support Bashar al-Assad’s government; Human Rights Watch documented boys as young as 14 being killed in combat. According to Iranian officials, in the 1980s, authorities recruited hundreds of thousands of children to fight during the Iran-Iraq war, with tens of thousands of them being killed.
The Office of the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict states that “whatever their role, [children] associated with parties to the conflict are exposed to extreme levels of violence.”
Iranian law explicitly allows recruitment into the army of children as young as 15.
Under the Statutes and Regulations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a person must be at least 16 years old to be recruited by the IRGC, whether as a permanent staff member, a contractor, or a special member of the Basij. Special Basij members are honorary guards of the IRGC who “possess the qualifications of a guard [official] and […] engage in full-time availability to the IRGC when needed.” However, under Article 94, children aged 15 and older can be considered “active” members capable of “collaborating with the IRGC in the execution of missions entrusted to them” after receiving training.
In its first report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1998, Iran stated that national legislation set 16 as the minimum age “for engagement in the armed forces for military training” and 17 as the minimum age for police forces.
The United Nations Security Council “strongly condemns” child recruitment and has established a reporting system, led by the Secretary-General, which considers this practice a “serious violation” of children’s rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the recruitment of children under 15. An Optional Protocol to the Convention, signed by Iran but not ratified, states that the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities is 18. Iran is required to adhere to customary international law, which stipulates that recruiting children under 15 constitutes a war crime.
“Those responsible for this reprehensible policy are exposing children to a risk of serious and irreversible harm and subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution,” concluded Bill Van Esveld. “Senior leaders who do nothing to end this situation cannot claim to care about the fate of Iranian children.”
