Children Recruitment into Military

On 15.2.2015. HRW says it has over the past months spoken to about a dozen children or young men who were under 18 or less when they fought in 2014, which were 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,” partly reads the report. On a visit to Malakal in late January 2015, HRW said it 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.