Cover of Cradled by Conflict

Mara R. Revkin, with research assistance by Ahmad Mhidi and Mazn Najmaldeen Saber

Understanding Child Recruitment and Use by Armed Groups in Syria and Iraq. In Cradled by Conflict: Child Involvement with Armed Groups in Contemporary Conflict 104–139, ed. Siobhan O’Neil and Kato Van Broeckhoven. United Nations University (2018)

This chapter asks how and why children become associated with non-state armed groups in Syria and Iraq. It situates recruitment within the wider harms the two conflicts have inflicted on children — displacement, the loss of parents, interrupted schooling, and sustained exposure to extreme violence — and then examines the recruitment practices of eleven armed groups operating across both countries, among them the Islamic State, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the People’s and Women’s Protection Units, and the Popular Mobilization Forces. The United Nations had verified 2,930 cases of the recruitment and use of children by the Syrian army and eighty-three separate non-state armed groups in Syria as of December 2017, and the true figure is believed to be considerably higher.

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A makeshift grave in a school yard north of Mosul

A makeshift grave in the yard of a primary school north of Mosul, Iraq (Revkin 2017)

A child's drawing of a house and garden

A child’s drawing of a house and garden, displacement camp east of Mosul (Revkin 2017)

Children's drawings in a displacement camp near Mosul

Children’s drawings in a displacement camp east of Mosul, Iraq (Revkin 2017)

A corridor inside a detention facility in Erbil

A corridor inside a detention facility in Erbil, Iraq (Revkin 2017)

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