Explained: PKK terror group and its systematic abuse of children

PKK terror organisation, and its offshoots including the YPG, have continued to actively recruit children by abducting them in violation of various international conventions and regulations.

The child recruitment drive is against international laws, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, but the terror group continues to recruit minors and takes away their right to live.

PKK/YPG continues this criminal practice of taking children away from their families despite a June 2019 agreement signed between the UN and one of the YPG terror group's ringleaders, Ferhat Abdi Sahin (codenamed Mazlum Abdi), in Geneva to release "child fighters within the organisation".

While the young are recruited through deception, coercion and abduction methods, the group also promises money to children and families who are facing economic difficulties in Iraq and Syria.

According to sources, the PKK takes the children forcibly under the name of "tax obligation," and tries to ensure that at least one person from each family is forcibly recruited under "compulsory military service."

The group's "Revolutionary Youth" wing, said to be operated from Syria, ensures children's participation by forcibly detaining or kidnapping them.

Forcible recruitment of children

The average age of a child in the terrorist organisation is 15, according to security sources, and due to a decrease in the number of sympathisers in recent years, the group strives to fill the gap by recruiting minors.

According to insiders, "training" provided by the terrorist organisation to children lasts approximately nine months, and in order to avoid international scrutiny, the trainees are registered with false names and identity information.

The terrorists also sexually abuse minor girls, many of whom have died while trying to escape from the terror camps, or from suicide and diseases, sources said.

The forcible recruitment of children recently triggered serious reactions among Syrians, with the public organising protests. The terrorist organisation, however, suppressed the demonstrations through violence.

Some of the families whose children were detained appealed to international organisations to bring their children back.

International bodies periodically reached out to the PKK/YPG, which goes by the name SDF in Syria, and demanded that the children's locations be reported and they be handed over to their families.

International reports

The terror organisation's recruitment of children has also been mentioned in many international reports.

In the United States Trafficking in Persons Report in 2016, it was emphasised that "PKK's Syrian branch, PYD/YPG, continues to recruit and use boys and girls, including children under the age of 15, as members of the organisation and taking them to training camps."

In the 2014 Human Rights Practices country report by the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, under the title Child Soldiers it was said the PKK regularly recruits children, but the number is not known.

In the Children and Armed Conflict report by the UN secretary-general to the Security Council in June 2015, it was stated that "girls and boys under the age of 15 were recruited by YPG/YPJ and used in war zones."

The UN, in its annual Children and Armed Conflict for the period of January-December 2022, said more than 1,200 children had been used as soldiers by the organisation.

According to the publication, the Syrian branch of the PKK, the SDF, had recruited 637 children, while the PKK/YPG and SDF-affiliated organisations listed 633 children to their armed staff.

The UN Children's Fund, or UNICEF, in June 2014 said it is "deeply concerned about the news that children are among the ranks of the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the international community. The use of children by armed forces and terrorist groups is against international law."

The Human Rights Watch also recorded in its June 2014 report that "YPG recruited children."