How the Houthis instrumentalize the Hamas-Israel war to Recruit Child Soldiers

Since last October, when the conflict in Gaza broke out in the wake of Hamas’ terror attacks inside Israel, the Houthis have been striving to present themselves on the regional and international scene as the most active defenders of the Palestinian people.

First, the Yemeni armed group launched a series of missile and drone attacks against Israel. As those attacks were promptly intercepted, the Houthis redirected their attention towards cargo ships transiting through the Red Sea, threatening maritime traffic in one of the world’s busiest waterways. In response, the US and the UK have been launching attacks on Houthi targets inside Yemen, including weapons depots, launch sites, and production facilities.  However, the attacks that were aimed at weakening the Houthis’ military capabilities have been de facto feeding into their rhetoric.

Capitalizing on the sympathy for the Palestinian cause and the hostility towards foreign intervention that are prevalent across Yemen, the Houthis have been exploiting those attacks to divert attention from the disastrous situation in Houthi-controlled areas (who would dare to complain at rising food and fuel prices, unpaid public salaries, and widespread unemployment when the group is standing up for the noble Palestinian cause), obtain support among the Yemeni people (including in government-controlled southern Yemen), and recruit new sympathizers, supporters, and fighters.

Child soldiering on the rise: Houthis’ recruitment in the wake of the Hamas-Israeli War

As far as the recruitment of fighters is concerned, the recruitment of children into the Houthi ranks is a source of special concern. In fact, as the Houthis claim that they have recruited more than 70,000 people to their armed forces since October 7, human rights activists report that hundreds or thousands of those are actually children. While accurate numbers are hard to verify, activists and experts working on issues related to child recruitment suggest that hundreds – and possibly even thousands – of the Houthis’ new recruits are younger than 18. What is certain is that the Houthis’ recruitment of children (including of children as young as 13) has increased dramatically over the last few months, helped by the wave of pro-Palestinian sentiment in the Yemeni street and by the Houthi instrumentalization thereof.

According to Niku Jafarnia, who was quoted by Human Rights Watch, noted, “the Houthis are exploiting the Palestinian cause to recruit more children for their domestic fight in Yemen”, making children believe that they will fight to liberate Palestine, but actually deploying them to fight in Marib and Taiz. While exploring the drivers of the Houthis’ behavior over the past few months lies beyond the scope of this article, the deployment of child soldiers to the front lines in Yemen confirms that Houthis instrumentalize the Gaza war for their intentions and priorities in Yemen.

Other activists have also noted that recruitment activities in schools across northern Yemen have increased since October 7, whereby children are pushed – under the supervision of the Minister of Education, Yahia Badreddin al-Houthi – [1] to join the Houthis’ own summer camps. There, they train children for war and indoctrinate them into their ideology, which is a unique mixture of traditional precepts of the Zaydi school of Shia Islam and anti-imperialist, anti-western ideas inspired by the state ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran.[2] This ideological system is certainly well captured by the group’s sarkha (“scream”, i.e., motto) “God is Great, death to America, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam. 

Child soldiers in the Houthis’ war for Yemen

While the recruitment of child soldiers by the Houthis has increased in the past few months following the latest regional events, it is certainly not a new development. Rather, it is one that can be traced back to the Houthis’ earliest years of life in the northern governorate of Saada.

In the 1980s, the Believing Youth (al-Shabaab al-Muminin) – the earliest manifestation of the group that would eventually become the Houthi movement – established summer camps for children running for three months during the holidays. The declared objective was to preserve traditional Zaydi heritage, which the group believed was under threat from Republican rule. Since the abolishment of the Zaydi state in 1962, in fact, successive Yemeni republican governments had felt nervous about the Zaydis’ traditional political activism and revolutionary ideology and had encouraged the activities of proselytization of Saudi-backed Wahhabi institutes and scholars. However, if the official goal was to provide an educational and intellectual foundation to the Zaydi youth, studies of the Zaydi doctrine soon became intertwined with military training.

Importantly, the Believing Youth camps allowed future Houthi leaders to gain prestige and sympathy with the local youth, something which proved to pay off in later years. In fact, during the six Saada wars fought between the Houthis and the government of then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh from 2004 to 2010, the Houthis easily recruited fighters to their cause throughout the northern regions, including child soldiers. Many of those children, who represent the initial battle-hardened core of the group and benefit from close personal ties with the Houthi clan, are now reportedly serving in the Houthi ranks as commanders.

As the current civil conflict broke out in 2014, all sides – Saudi Arabia, the Houthis, the internationally recognized government, and UAE-backed militias such as the Security Belt Forces and the Shabwani Elite Forces – have recruited children and used them in battle. However, the Houthis have been found to be the party most responsible for the proliferation of child soldiering.

For instance, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, the Houthis recruited over 10,000 children between 2014 and 2021. In June 2023, the report of the Secretary General on Children in Armed Conflict noted that a total of 105 children, some as young as 10, were verified as recruited and used by the Houthis in 2022.

But how does the Houthi engage in child recruitment in the areas under its control? First, taking advantage of the rampant poverty that affects many households across northern Yemen, the Houthis offer material benefits to families who contribute soldiers, including children, to the cause. Specifically,  Human Rights Watch found that the Houthis weaponize humanitarian aid by stealing relief packages and distributing them to those families who send their children to the group’s ranks.

Second, the Houthis have been imposing taxes on school attendance. This fee, which amounts to 1,000 Yemeni rials ($1.50) per month, has been forcing many families to withdraw their children from school. Allegedly imposed to cover the costs of maintaining the education system, the fee is de facto serving the aim of preventing poor families from sending their children to non-Houthi schools. Deprived of access to education, as well as of any realistic alternative, many children become easy targets for the Houthis’ recruitment campaigns.  

Third, children are also recruited through coercion and threats both to the children themselves and to their parents. Families in Houthi-controlled areas that refuse to send their children to join the armed group’s fighting force are subjected to retribution, with their children ending up being abducted, arbitrarily detained, and subjected to various forms of ill-treatment. In other cases, children are forcibly taken to the Houthis’ summer camps, subjected to military training, and subsequently sent to the front lines.

Fourth, the Houthis instrumentalize deeply entrenched social and cultural norms that associate manhood with arms bearing for their recruitment purposes. Throughout the group’s propaganda materials, the image of mujahidin fighting in the path of God (or rather, for the Houthis’ cause) is presented as an ideal that any child should aspire to embody. The Houthis also engage extensively in the celebration of child “martyrs” whose pictures dominate the streets of Sanaa and other Houthi-controlled cities as well as the booklets used in the Houthi summer camps.

Once they are part of the Houthi fighting machine, children are deployed to the frontlines. There, they are required to engage in combat roles, lay mines, guard checkpoints, armored vehicles, and buildings. In addition to that, children (including girls) are frequently used as porters, carrying ammunition and food to frontline fighters, as spies, cooks, and recruiters of other children. They also retrieve wounded and dead fighters and provide first aid.

International law on children in armed conflict

International humanitarian law and international human rights law clearly prohibit the recruitment of children in conflict. The prohibition is applicable in both international armed conflicts (between two or more states) and non-international armed conflicts (in which one or more non-state armed groups are involved), as defined in the Additional Protocols to the 1949 Four Geneva Conventions.

With respect to international armed conflicts, Article 77(2)  of Additional Protocol I (to which Yemen is a party) stipulates that “the parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces. […]” With respect to non-international armed conflicts, Article 4(3)(c) of Additional Protocol II (to which Yemen is also a party) states that “children who have not attained the age of fifteen years shall neither be recruited in the armed forces or groups nor allowed to take part in hostilities.”

On the side of human rights treaty law, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (which Yemen ratified in 2007) states that “States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities” (Article 1) and that “States Parties shall ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 18 years are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces” (Article 2). With respect to armed groups, Article 4(1) states that “Armed groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years.”

The Yemeni conflict is classified as a non-international armed conflict to which Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions applies and is binding on all parties, including the Houthis. Moreover, the ability of the Houthis to exercise territorial control over large parts of (northern) Yemen suggests that they fulfill the required criterion for the applicability of Protocol II. The Houthis, and all other parties, are also bound by customary international humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts (unwritten rules that come from a general practice accepted as law). In addition, international human rights law also continues to apply during times of armed conflict and it is increasingly recognized that non-state armed groups that exercise de facto control over some areas, such as the Houthis, are bound by international human rights law. As such, the Houthis’ recruitment of children in its ranks is found to be in violation of applicable international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

Conclusion

At this time  - and especially since the Houthis’ escalation in the Red Sea - the prospects of a peace agreement being reached in Yemen could not look grimmer.  As long as the Houthis’ confrontation with the Yemeni government continues, it seems impossible to imagine the Houthis interrupting their recruitment of children. From a Houthi perspective, in fact, the costs of recruiting children are none and the benefits to be ripped are many.

However, even if things change in the near future and an agreement of some sort is finally signed by the warring parties, the issue of child soldiers is not one that would easily end with the end of hostilities. In fact, it is hard to imagine that a country could be built on peace by a generation grown and (forcibly) raised in war. In other words, the increasing exposure of Yemen’s children to military training and (direct and indirect) participation in hostilities – combined with limited access to education, rampant poverty, and ideological indoctrination – does not bode well for a peaceful future.

It is therefore important that any future negotiation process to end the conflict in Yemen includes a clear pathway for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of the thousands of Yemeni children who have been involved in the conflict over the past years and prevent their re-recruitment.