The Iran-backed Houthis are training and recruiting children to join the terror group under the guise of summer camps, Yemeni Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryani published on social media on Wednesday, along with footage of the apparent training facilities.
The footage of the camps was allegedly taken in the Houthi-controlled Amran Governorate, the same area embroiled in deadly tribal clashes in recent days.
Eryani claimed the training camps were a violation of international rights and the rights of children.
“These practices once again confirm that what the Houthi militia promotes as summer activities is nothing more than a deceptive facade for a systematic scheme aimed at recruiting children, reshaping their consciousness, and planting concepts of violence and extremism in their minds from an early age,” Eryani claimed. “Subjecting children to combat training within these camps clearly exposes the extent of the exploitation practiced by the militia against childhood, turning them into fuel for its futile wars, without any regard for their future or their basic rights to education and a safe life.”
Officials inspect, approve of the camps' 'Quranic culture'
The Houthi-controlled Saba News Agency reported that the governor of Amran, Amin Faras, the district director, Ayman Abu Mansar, and other Houthi officials inspected the camps on Wednesday and praised their activities.
The children were taught to memorize and recite the Quran, providing them with divine guidance, and instilled with “Qur’anic culture in their minds—protecting them from false beliefs, misguided ideas, and the dangers of ‘soft war,’” Saba reported.
Officials who visited the camps were reported to have held a meeting following the visit, where they discussed “the importance of summer courses in safeguarding the younger generation and protecting them from the enemies of the nation and their tools who, according to the text, seek by all means to undermine religious identity, values, and morals through social media and what it calls American-Zionist aggression channels and their affiliated agents.”
Photos published by the Houthi-controlled site show images of children in military garb and
Eryani said that the camps are just the latest rights violation by the Houthis, who have pushed thousands of children into combat zones.
Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, published in 2024 that in the months following Hamas’s October 7 attacks, the Houthis stepped up their recruitment of child soldiers, but such practices have been recorded since at least 2009.
One activist told HRW that the Houthis’ recruitment “activities in schools have increased massively [since October 7], including through the school scouts. They take students from schools to their culture centers where they lecture children about the Jihad and send them to military camps and front lines.”