(Beyrouth) – The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran is currently conducting a campaign to recruit children as young as 12 years old to volunteer as “fighters for the defense of the homeland”, Human Rights Watch declared today. The recruitment and use of children for military purposes is a grave violation of children’s rights, and a war crime when the children are under 15 years old.
On March 26, an official from the 27th Mohammad Rasulullah division of the IRGC in Tehran stated that a campaign aimed at enrolling civilians, titled “Fighters for the Defense of the Homeland in Iran”, had set the minimum recruitment age at 12 years. Amid thousands of attacks by the United States and Israel across the country, these children would be at serious risk of death or injury if they were in military installations. Iranian authorities should end this campaign and prohibit all military and paramilitary forces in Iran from recruiting children under 18 years old.
“There is no justification for an army recruitment campaign targeting children to enlist, let alone children as young as 12,” said Bill Van Esveld, Associate Director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. “It comes down to a simple fact: Iranian authorities seem willing to put children’s lives at risk for additional forces.”
This campaign aims to recruit civilians to provide catering and medical services, distribute items, take care of damaged homes, as well as perform security maintenance activities such as guarding checkpoints, participating in operational and surveillance patrols, and convoying vehicles, stated Rahim Nadali, an IRGC official, during an interview with the Iranian news agency Defa Press. The recruitment campaign’s promotional poster, published by the news agency, also lists these activities and features two children, a boy and a girl, alongside two adults, one of them in military uniform.
In a televised interview, Rahim Nadali said: “[Regarding] surveillance and operational patrols, several adolescents and young people have approached us repeatedly indicating their desire to participate. As for the Basij [paramilitary force] checkpoint officers now seen in all cities, numerous young people and adolescents have expressed their willingness to be present. Considering the age of the individuals who made these requests, we have set the age limit [minimum] at 12 years. This means that there are now 12 and 13-year-old children asking to be present in this space.”
Candidates can register at mosques in Tehran that host Basij bases, according to Rahil Nadali and the recruitment posters. The Basij force operates under the IRGC’s command.
Over the past month, according to media reports, the United States and Israel have carried out tens of thousands of airstrikes targeting numerous Basij and IRGC installations, as well as several Basij checkpoints in Tehran, resulting in casualties among these forces.
Several children have already been victims of unlawful attacks in Iran. Human Rights Watch estimated that an unlawful attack on an Iranian elementary school in Minab on February 28, which killed dozens of school children and other civilians, should be investigated as a war crime. A preliminary report from the US military indicated that the United States was responsible for the attack. Human Rights Watch has called on Congress to hold special hearings on the US military’s targeting practices.
Iran has been recruiting children under 18 years old into the Basij forces for several years. During the Syrian civil war, the IRGC recruited Afghan immigrant children living in Iran as child soldiers and sent them to Syria to support Bashar al-Assad’s government; Human Rights Watch documented that boys as young as 14 were killed in combat. According to Iranian officials, in the 1980s, authorities recruited hundreds of thousands of children to fight during the Iran-Iraq war, and tens of thousands of them were killed.
The UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict asserts that “regardless of their role, [children] associated with parties to conflict are exposed to extreme levels of violence.”
Iranian legislation explicitly allows recruitment into the army of children as young as 15 years old.
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 permanent staff, contract staff, or special Basij members. Special Basij members are honorary guards of the IRGC who “possess the qualifications of a [official] guard and […] commit to make themselves available to the IRGC full-time when needed.” However, according to article 94, children aged 15 and over can be considered “active” members, capable of “working with the IRGC in carrying out assigned tasks” after undergoing training.
In its first report presented to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1998, Iran indicated that national legislation set the minimum age at 16 for “engagement in the armed forces for military training” and 17 for police forces. The UN Security Council “strongly condemned” the recruitment of children and 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 years old. An Optional Protocol to the Convention, which Iran signed but did not ratify, stipulates that the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities is 18 years. Iran is required to adhere to customary international law, which states that recruiting children under 15 years old is a war crime.
<p"Those involved in this reprehensible policy are exposing children to a risk of serious and irreversible harm, and are 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.".
Source: Ouest-France
