Omkring 12.000 børn under 18 år bliver brugt i Sydsudans hær, oprørsgrupper og militser. Både regeringsstyrker og opposition rekrutterer børn, siger Human Rights Watch.
South Sudanese government forces are actively recruiting boys as young as 13, often by force, as soldiers in Malakal, Upper Nile state, Human Rights Watch said today.
Both parties to South Sudan’s conflict have recruited and used child soldiers, which is a war crime when children are under 15.
Commanders from both the government and the opposition should issue clear orders barring recruitment of all children under 18 and cooperate with relevant United Nations agencies to help these children return to places of safety.
“Despite renewed promises by both government and opposition forces that they will stop using child soldiers, both sides continue to recruit and use children in combat,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
“In Malakal, government forces are even taking children from right outside the United Nations compound.”
Forced to fight
Opposition forces have also recruited and used many child soldiers.
Over the past months Human Rights Watch has spoken to about a dozen children or young men who were under 18 years of age when they fought in 2014, who have been used by opposition forces in battles and for other purposes such as cooking and carrying water and ammunition.
One 16-year-old in Bentiu described his terror when, only a day after being recruited with dozens of others in December 2013, he was given a gun for the first time by a rebel commander and forced to fight.
Human Rights Watch, on a visit to Malakal in late January 2015, collected about 25 accounts of child recruitment in the area from parents and other relatives, from children who had escaped recruitment or whose friends had been recruited, and from young adults who had also been forcibly recruited together with children.
During the visit to Malakal, Human Rights Watch found that government forces, apparently especially those led by the former militia leader Johnson Olony, had recruited at least 15 children, some forcibly, within recent weeks, as part of recruitment efforts that appear mainly to be targeting adults.
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