By Lauren Mellinger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

SANA’A, Yemen– On January 25, the Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection, a Yemeni child-rights organization based in Sana’a made an urgent humanitarian appeal to end the use of children as tribal fighters in northern Yemen.  According to a recent study by the organization, as many as half of the tribal fighters involved in violent clashes in north Yemen are children.

Seyaj noted that over the past four months, more than 63 people were killed in ethnic clashes in Amran province in north Yemen, and forty percent of those killed were children.  According to Ahmad Al-Qurashi, the organizations director, “the tribal culture in Yemen does not regard a 15-year old as a child…Yemen’s society as a whole views a 15-year old as a man and they’re forced into battles.  The society views fighting alongside a tribe as an important part of a child’s passage to manhood.  We see children as young as 13 carrying weapons that are bigger than they are.”

Seyaj blames the Yemeni government  for the high rate of children currently serving as tribal fighters.  The tribal areas in north Yemen are not provided sufficient financial resources by the government, and as a result they lack educational opportunities, and health and development programs.  Often children drop out of school by the age of 12 and either work in their families’ farms or are inducted as tribal soldiers.  According to the report released by Seyaj, the government does not intervene in the northern tribal areas to prevent the tribes from recruiting children as soldiers. 

In its Child Soldiers Global Report 2008, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers accused the Yemeni government of recruiting child soldiers in a war with rebels in north Yemen since 2004, despite the legal minimum recruitment age of 18.  According to the report, “joining the army was highly sought after, since other employment opportunities were extremely limited.  Parents sometimes agreed to the recruitment of their children into the armed forces because of their poor economic situation.”

Seyaj urged the government to provide the tribal areas with sufficient economic resources and with better educational opportunities in order to reduce the number of children serving as tribal fighters.  In addition, the organization is demanding that the fighting tribes throughout north Yemen to stop using children in armed clashes and to respect the State’s minimum legal age for an individual to join armed forces.  To that end, Seyaj recommends that government officials and tribal sheikhs enact a new law to punish those targeting women and children, using them as fighters for combat operations or for providing logistical support or any other form of engagement with tribal forces.
For more information, please see:

The Media Line – Report: Half Yemen’s Tribal Fighters are Children – 26 January 2009

Armies of Liberation – SEYAJ Opposes Use of Child Soldiers in Amran Tribal War – 25 January 2009

News Yemen – Yemeni Children Used as Soldiers in Sa’ada War: Report – 7 September 2008

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers – Child Soldiers Global Report 2008 – 20 May 2008