Under the title ""Thousands on the Frontlines": Yemeni Children as Fuel for Houthi Militias," the Al Arabiya website reported that the Houthi militias continue to recruit children and push them into the throes of war and on the frontlines of combat. This was reiterated by Yemeni Minister of Information Muammar al-Eryani, who confirmed that the Houthis are still exploiting Yemeni children for combat activities.
In a series of tweets posted on his Twitter account last night, accompanied by photos of young children carrying weapons and machine guns, he indicated that the militias "are dragging thousands of them every day to their meaningless battles on various frontlines to serve their project and implement the Iranian expansionist agenda, without any regard for their fate and the suffering of their families.”
In commemoration of World Children's Day, he added that the Houthis "have dragged tens of thousands of children from their homes, neighborhoods, and schools to their camps, filling their minds with hostile slogans and sectarian ideas imported from Iran." He further confirmed that the militias have pushed these young individuals toward certain death on the frontlines "in the largest act of exploitation in human history."
The Yemeni minister called on the international community and the United Nations to exert pressure on the Houthi group "to stop the crimes of recruiting children and classify them as a terrorist organization," demanding accountability for those involved in their leadership and ranks and pursuing them in international courts as war criminals.
It is worth noting that Yemen’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Marwan Naaman, announced in September (2021) that the militias have recruited more than 35,000 children since 2014, 17% of whom are under the age of eleven, while over 6,700 children remain on the frontlines. For his part, the U.S. envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, confirmed that the Houthis' recruitment of children and military escalation are all practices undermining peace efforts. Additionally, a Yemeni rights network documented 20,977 violations against Yemeni children, along with the displacement and homelessness of more than 43,000 children by the militias from January 2017 to March 2021.
