UAE must speak out against use of child soldiers

The UAE has a responsibility to help countries in the region to deal with conflict and end the use of child soldiers, experts have said.

Humanitarian and security experts have said recruitment of child soldiers, such as these Yemeni children photographed this year during a pro-Houthi march in Sanaa, is on the increase. Mohammed Huwais Show more

ABU DHABI // The UAE has a responsibility to help countries in the region to deal with conflict and end the use of child soldiers.

With wars raging in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the number of children being recruited to fight in these countries has doubled in the past year, experts told an audience at the Future Security of the GCC Forum.

Arabian Gulf countries also need to negotiate with armed groups to end violent regional conflicts, humanitarian and security experts said.

“The challenge in Yemen is that the war has affected millions of displaced people,” said Elias Diab, humanitarian affairs specialist at the United Nations in Lebanon.

“The key element of the challenge is the use of child soldiers below the age of 15. Often, we are only focused on seeing children wearing suicide vests or holding a gun, but these children are [also] used to spot the enemy, collect information and conduct all sorts of services for the armed groups.”

Since August, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated that 1.5 million Yemenis had been displaced internally, resulting in many children becoming casualties of the war.

“We have seen that the weapons training and suicide bombing missions have mainly been done through children as young as 14,” Mr Diab said.

“We know for sure that more than 1,000 have been killed and injured since March this year, with at least 377 cases of child recruitment that are verified – more than double last year. Recruiting a child during war is a war crime.”

Tactics such as using human shields or endangering civilians can also never be justified, said Dr Ahmed Al Hamli, president of Abu Dhabi think tank Trends Research and Advisory.

Dr Al Hamli said groups such as ISIL and Al Qaeda, by their use of armed force to achieve political goals, were clearly declaring themselves to be outside international legal frameworks.

“We have seen groups like the Houthis using children as soldiers, women as human shields to hide soldiers and military equipment in civilian villages. We have to find ways to ensure compliance with legal frameworks by armed [groups].”

Humanitarian responses from stable countries in the region would also have to improve, Dr Diab said. “We might be more prepared to go to war, but not for the aftermath of war.

“Our means and methods to conduct warfare today have got more complex but our humanitarian response has been the same since the Second World War, so we need to ... transform the conflict and manage it socially, politically, economically, and not just respond in a classical emergency response way.”

When the UAE joined the Saudi-led Operation Restoring Hope, in Yemen, it became partly responsible for rectifying the situation, Mr Diab said.

“At some point, we will sit and talk to the Houthis,” he said.

“The UAE and the Gulf all have a key responsibility to prevent these violations.”