Thousands of children have been detained and many tortured during security operations carried out in response to threats from extremists such as the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, and Boko Haram in Nigeria, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
In a new report, the US-based rights group documented an increase in the detention of children in six conflict-affected nations — Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Nigeria and Syria.
“As governments try to respond to armed conflict and the rise of armed extremist groups like ISIS [Islamic State] and Boko Haram, we’ve been seeing a very alarming trend,” Human Rights Watch director of advocacy for children’s rights Jo Becker said. “Governments are detaining thousands of children, without charge, often for months or years, and often subjecting them to torture and ill treatment.”
In Syria, now in its sixth year of war, at least 1,433 children have been detained, but only 436 have been released, the report said, quoting the Violations Documentation Center in Syria.
At least 100 of the thousands of tortured detainees documented in the “Caesar” photographs smuggled out by a Syrian defector were boys under the age of 18, Human Rights Watch said.
They include 14-year-old Ahmad al-Musalmani, who was arrested in 2012 when Syrian officers found a recording of a song protesting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s rule on his mobile phone. He died in detention.
In Iraq, where security forces are battling to retake territory held by the Islamic State group, at least 314 children, including 58 girls, have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related charges, the report said, quoting UN figures.
Women and children are arrested for alleged terrorist activities by men in their families, and in some cases subjected to severe beatings, burns with cigarettes and electric shocks to obtain confessions, the report said.
A 10-year-old boy who was arrested by Iraqi security forces in 2012 described how the men held his head near a car tire and threatened to run him over unless he told them where his parents hid their weapons.
Nigeria’s military battling the Boko Haram insurgency has rounded up and detained thousands of people, mostly men and boys as young as nine.
The report quoted findings by Amnesty International that between February and May this year, 11 children under the age of six, including four babies, died in Giwa barracks in northeast Nigeria. Amnesty International estimates that at least 120 children are still being held in appalling conditions.
The report cited UN figures showing that children detained in Afghanistan had been subjected to torture more frequently than adults, possibly because authorities felt they could extract information more easily from them.
All six nations cited in the report are signatories of the UN convention on the rights of children.
Human Rights Watch released the report ahead of a debate at the UN on Tuesday on children in armed conflicts.
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