The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran is currently conducting a campaign to recruit children as young as 12 years old to voluntarily join as “fighters for the defense of the homeland,” according to Human Rights Watch. The recruitment and use of children for military purposes constitute a serious violation of children’s rights and a war crime when the children are under the age of 15.
On March 26, a official from the 27th Mohammad Rasulullah division of the IRGC in Tehran announced a campaign to recruit civilians called “Fighters for the Defense of the Homeland in Iran,” setting the minimum recruitment age at 12 years old. With thousands of attacks by the United States and Israel across the country, these children would be at risk of death or injury if they were on military installations. Iranian authorities should end this campaign and prohibit all military and paramilitary forces in Iran from recruiting children under 18 years old.
“There is no justification for an army recruitment campaign to encourage children to enlist, especially children as young as 12,” said Bill Van Esveld, Deputy Director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. “It comes down to a simple fact: Iranian authorities seem willing to put children’s lives at risk to have more personnel.”
The recruitment campaign aims to enlist civilians to provide restoration and medical services, distribute items, care for damaged homes, and participate in security activities such as guarding checkpoints, operational patrols, surveillance, and vehicle convoys, as stated by Rahim Nadali, an IRGC official. Candidates can sign up at mosques in Tehran that host Basij bases, according to Nadali and the recruitment posters.
Last month, the US and Israel carried out tens of thousands of airstrikes on Basij and IRGC installations, as well as several Basij checkpoints in Tehran, resulting in deaths and injuries among these forces.
Several children have already been victims of illegal attacks in Iran. Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into a February 28 illegal attack on an Iranian primary school in Minab that killed dozens of students and other civilians. A preliminary report from the US military indicated that the US was responsible for the attack. Human Rights Watch urged Congress to hold special hearings on the US military’s targeting practices.
Iran has been recruiting children under 18 years old into the Basij forces for several years. During the civil war in Syria, the IRGC recruited Afghan immigrant children living in Iran as child soldiers, sending them to Syria to support Bashar al-Assad’s government. Boys as young as 14 were killed in combat. In the 1980s, Iranian authorities recruited hundreds of thousands of children to fight in the Iran-Iraq war, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of them.
The UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict has stated that regardless of their role, children associated with parties in conflict are exposed to extreme violence.
Iranian law explicitly allows recruitment into the military for children as young as 15 years old. According to the statutes and regulations of the IRGC, recruits must be at least 16 years old to join as permanent, contractual, or special Basij members. However, under Article 94, children aged 15 and older can be considered “active” members after receiving training.
In its first report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1998, Iran stated that national legislation sets 16 as the minimum age “for recruitment into the armed forces for military training” and 17 as the minimum age for police forces.
The UN Security Council “strongly condemns” the recruitment of children and has set up a reporting mechanism led by the Secretary-General, considering this practice a “serious violation” of children’s rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the recruitment of children under 15 years old. A Optional Protocol to the Convention, signed by Iran but not ratified, specifies that the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities is 18. Iran is obligated to respect customary international law, which considers recruiting children under 15 as a war crime.
“Those involved in this reprehensible policy are exposing children to a risk of serious and irreversible harm and themselves to criminal prosecution,” concluded Bill Van Esveld. “Top leaders who do nothing to end this situation cannot claim to care about the fate of Iranian children.”
