(Beirut) – A Kurdish youth group in northeast Syria with links to the de facto authorities is recruiting children apparently for eventual transfer to armed groups, Human Rights Watch said today. Child recruitment robs children of their childhood, exposes them to extreme violence, and can cause lasting physical and psychological trauma.
The Revolutionary Youth Movement of Syria, or Tevgera Ciwanên Şoreşger, has recruited girls and boys as young as 12, removing them from their schools and homes, denying their families contact with them, and rebuffing the families’ frantic efforts to find them. Despite commitments from the authorities to end the practice, the group appears to engage in the ideological indoctrination of children on behalf of armed groups openly and with impunity.
“While the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has committed to end all recruitment of children, the blatant involvement of groups like the Revolutionary Youth Movement and the persistent number of child recruitment cases year on year underscores a critical failure,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The SDF needs to take immediate and decisive action to ensure that all groups operating in areas it controls adhere to strict anti-child recruitment policies, and that every child is protected from exploitation.”
While not an armed group itself, the youth group appears to be deeply intertwined in the political and military structures of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria, and the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), its military wing. Its primary role appears to be the ideological indoctrination of children, with independent Syrian human rights organizations documenting cases in which the youth group has transferred children, primarily girls, to armed groups affiliated with the SDF, despite commitments by the SDF to end child recruitment.
Child recruitment into armed forces or groups violates international humanitarian law, which prohibits the recruitment or use of children under 15 in conflicts. Such recruitment or use of children in conflicts is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Additionally, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict forbids non-state armed groups from recruiting children under 18 under any circumstances.
The UN Secretary General’s latest annual report on Children and Armed Conflict accused all Syrian parties to the conflict of recruiting children, with 231 UN-verified cases in 2023 attributed to the SDF and affiliated groups. A July 2023 report by Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) documented 43 cases by the Revolutionary Youth Movement in the first half of 2023 alone.
Between June and August 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed seven families in territory governed by the Autonomous Administration who said that their children, six girls and two boys between the ages of 12 and 17, were taken by the Revolutionary Youth Movement between March 2023 and July 2024. Among those children, four are under age 15, and seven, including two siblings, are from families internally displaced following Turkish military incursions into the region.
None of the families have managed to establish contact with their children since they vanished. In two cases, families saw pictures of their children in military uniforms, indicating probable transfer to armed groups. In other cases, the children’s whereabouts and circumstances remain unknown.
Human Rights Watch also spoke to a UN employee who worked with the SDF on a UN action plan to end child recruitment; and a Syrian Kurdish human rights researcher who documented hundreds of cases of child recruitment across northeast Syria and who described the tactics the youth group uses to recruit children. On one occasion, the youth group published on its website a statement honoring a girl who had joined them at 14, later fought with the women’s branch of the armed group, and died while on duty at 17.
Human Rights Watch wrote to the SDF and the Autonomous Administration on August 26, requesting information about the role of the Revolutionary Youth Movement in child recruitment and the plans or steps the authorities had undertaken to address it, but they have not responded. Human Rights Watch also wrote to the US Departments of State and Defense on September 9.
The United States provides significant support to the SDF in the form of military aid, training, and logistical support, primarily aimed at combating the Islamic State (ISIS) in northeast Syria. This support includes the deployment of US troops, airstrikes, and the provision of arms and equipment, helping the SDF maintain control over areas previously held by ISIS.
To address ongoing child recruitment effectively, the SDF and its affiliates should immediately cease all child recruitment activities by armed groups in their coalition, and ensure that no recruitment occurs by affiliated or external entities within their areas of control. They should carry out genuine investigations into illegal child recruitment activities in their areas of control, holding those responsible to account. They should strengthen oversight and accountability over all groups operating in their areas of control, including by establishing more effective monitoring systems, and in the meantime ensure clear communication channels between recruited children and their parents.
The SDF should safely return all children under 18 to their families and provide medical and psychological support. They should expand the child protection offices they established to help prevent child recruitment and ensure that they have the resources, staff, and authority to investigate and take seriously every report of a missing child.
As a key ally of the SDF, the US should use its influence to ensure these measures are implemented and consider sanctioning the Revolutionary Youth Movement for its role in child recruitment. US law, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, prohibits the US from providing military assistance to governments recruiting and using child soldiers. The US should apply the same principles to non-state armed groups it supports, Human Rights Watch said.
“The SDF and the Autonomous Administration have taken important steps to end the pernicious practice of child recruitment, but failing to address coercive and covert recruitment by the Revolutionary Youth Movement threatens to undo this progress,” said Coogle.
Commitment to End Child Recruitment
In 2019, the Syrian Democratic Forces signed an action plan with the UN, committing to concrete and time-bound measures to end and prevent the recruitment and military use of children.
As part of its action plan, the SDF, a multi-ethnic coalition of armed groups, issued military orders prohibiting the recruitment and use of children, trained commanders, established child protection offices tasked with receiving and investigating claims of child recruitment across its areas of control, and demobilized dozens of child recruits.
However, the UN’s successive reports show fluctuating progress, with between 130 and 285 verified cases of SDF child recruitment continuing each year between 2019 and 2023. In 2020, the SDF disengaged 150 children from its ranks, showing significant effort in implementing the 2019 action plan. This number of demobilizations increased slightly to 182 in 2021, indicating continued progress.
In 2022 SDF child recruitment spiked to 637 verified cases. That was the year that SDF demobilizations also fell sharply to just 33 children, according to the UN, reflecting a concerning decrease in corrective action even as child recruitment soared. In November 2022 the SDF also reportedly shut down one of its eight main child protection offices. Successive UN reports attributed 60 verified cases of child recruitment to the Revolutionary Youth between 2019 and 2023.
Recruitment by Revolutionary Youth Movement
Research by independent Syrian human rights groups shows that the Revolutionary Youth Movement has been transferring children to the two main components of the SDF, the People’s Protection Unit (YPG) and its women’s branch, the YPJ, both of them armed groups that have been themselves directly implicated in recruiting child soldiers.
The Syrian Kurdish human rights researcher who documented hundreds of cases of child recruitment across northeast Syria told Human Rights Watch that after the Revolutionary Youth Movement recruits children and isolates them from their families, it subjects them to at least two months of rigorous ideological training, and then often directs them to join armed groups, including the YPG and YPJ; with some even receiving additional military training with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group based in Türkiye and Iraq, in the Qandil mountains of Iraq. Human Rights Watch wrote to the PKK on September 24. On September 28, the organization responded in a letter rejecting allegations of child recruitment, emphasizing their commitment to “to act according to the requirements of this [Geneva] convention”, and denying having any “organizational relations” with youth movements in Syria. .
The UN employee who worked with the SDF on a UN action plan to end child recruitment also reported that the youth group has sent children to the Qandil mountains for military training. This claim is supported by the 2024 US State Department Trafficking in Persons report, which highlighted child recruitment by the Revolutionary Youth Movement and noted that observers have reported children receiving military training in the Qandil mountains. Similarly, a 2024 report by the Centre for Documentation and Counter Extremism, a Danish governmental agency, referenced accounts of children being indoctrinated by the group and ending up in training camps in the Qandil or Sinjar mountains.
Family Accounts
In all but one case, families interviewed reported that their children had simply left home one day and never returned. Following frantic inquiries with various actors, including SDF and Autonomous Administration officials, they later learned, either through calls from people claiming to be Revolutionary Youth Movement members or through acquaintances with connections to the group or the authorities, that their children had been taken by the youth group. In one instance, the mother of a missing 12-year-old girl in Qamishli said that when she asked the Asayish, the internal security forces in northeast Syria, they told her that the youth group had taken her child in December 2023.
After nearly 24 hours of searching for his missing 14-year-old sister in June 2024, a displaced man living with his family in the Shahba region in northern Aleppo learned from a neighbor that she had been seen getting into a black minivan just 200 meters from their home. After reaching out to various officials, her brother said, the family received an anonymous call a few days later confirming that she had joined the youth group.
A Shahba municipality employee and a woman he said was a member of the youth group herself later delivered his sister’s phone and a memory card to the family. He said they found a video on the card that showed his sister stating that she willingly joined the group.
Two other families said that following their children’s disappearances and their search for them, they received phone calls from people who identified themselves as members of the youth group, confirming their children had joined them and asking them to come pick up their mobile phones. One father to another 14-year-old girl who had been missing since March 2023, said that members of the youth group called him and told him they would return her phone and allow him to see her on the condition that he would record a video stating that she joined them willingly.
“I refused the request,” he said, explaining that he later discovered that a male member of the youth group had been communicating with his daughter over Facebook Messenger, coaxing her into joining the group. He has not heard from his daughter in more than 16 months but said he had since viewed a photo of her in military uniform at a military training center in Shadad city in the Hasakeh governorate. None of the other families have been able to communicate with their children since they were taken.
One woman displaced from Afrin and living in Qamishli said that the youth group recruited her 14-year-old daughter, her only child, in 2023, but that her daughter returned home two months later upon learning her mother had fallen ill. But then in June, the mother said, the girl, an eighth grader, received a phone call while reviewing schoolwork and listening to music. Her daughter became frightened and told her mother she had to leave again.
“Since then, I have been unaware of my daughter’s whereabouts or well-being,” she said. The woman noted that after the first recruitment, her daughter refused to speak of her experience with the youth group and that she had become aggressive and seemed emotionally distressed.
“I am asking the international community to protect my daughter, who should be studying, not carrying weapons,” she said.
No Help for Missing Children’s Families
In six of the cases Human Rights Watch documented, families reported that they reached out to relevant Autonomous Administration and SDF officials, including the child protection offices, but the authorities failed to intervene effectively, providing no discernable assistance in locating or recovering their children.
The woman whose 12-year-old daughter had been missing since December 2023, and who the Internal Security Forces later confirmed had been taken by the Revolutionary Youth Movement, said that an employee at the child protection office she visited in Qamishli told her they were “powerless to help.”
Two fathers said that members of the Revolutionary Youth taunted them when they kept trying to get their children back. One man, whose 14-year-old daughter is the only girl in his extended family, said that a Revolutionary Youth member told him that “even if I set myself on fire here, my daughter would not return.” Another father, whose 16-year-old daughter has been missing since December 2023, said he visited “dozens of offices,” including a child protection office to seek help, but that the only response he received was from Revolutionary Youth members telling him his daughter would “never return” to him.
While a US State Department report in 2022 mentioned that the SDF has taken disciplinary measures against SDF personnel who violate commitments made to prevent child recruitment under the 2019 UN action plan, there is no indication that the SDF or the Autonomous Administration have taken any steps to investigate and hold the Revolutionary Youth group accountable for engaging in child recruitment.
The Revolutionary Youth Movement of Syria
Human Rights Watch reviewed relevant open-source information, including websites of the Revolutionary Youth group, the Autonomous Administration, and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which serves as the dominant political force in the Autonomous Administration. That review revealed that the Revolutionary Youth Movement, which identifies as a socialist movement inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is ideologically aligned with the PKK and the PYD. The website of the Revolutionary Youth group is intermittently accessible, and its YouTube and Telegram channels remain active. Where relevant, Human Rights Watch has provided links to archived versions of webpages available on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
The youth group has a strong presence across northeast Syria through offices and centers, and a variety of youth-aimed cultural, political, and military training activities, some of which are attended and endorsed by high-ranking SDF and Autonomous Administration officials. Members of the Revolutionary Youth Movement have reportedly engaged in hostile acts against protesters, journalists, and political opposition parties in recent years.
On an archived page of its website , the group describes itself as part of the Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) Youth Council. The PYD prominently features the youth group’s activities on its own website, and the US State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons report confirms they are affiliated.
The Revolutionary Youth Movement’s website, as well as its social media channels, openly showcases its efforts to recruit youth for future participation in armed conflict, with numerous articles in mid-2024 announcing that a number of young people joined “guerrilla ranks”, “avenged” martyrs, or “responded to the call for mobilization.”. The articles are often accompanied by images of youth – some appearing to be children – in military attire.
Notably, in its “Martyrs of the Youth Movement” section of the website, the group honors Ronahi Ibrahim, a young internally displaced girl from Ras al-Ain (Serekaniye), which Türkiye invaded and occupied in 2019. According to the webpage dedicated to Ibrahim, an archived version of which is not available online, but which Human Rights Watch has a copy of on file, Ibrahim joined the Revolutionary Youth group in 2021 at age 14 and was killed in January 2024 at age 17. A local media report covering her funeral indicated that she fought with the YPJ and that she died in an unspecified incident while on duty.
The 14-year-old girl’s brother who lives in Shahba said that the Revolutionary Youth often target children in schools. “They conduct their activities in schools under the guise of cultural events, but they actually brainwash children to join them,” he said. “My sister wasn’t the only one from her school to join the group, many of her classmates joined before her too.”
According to an April 2024 report by the Syrian Justice and Accountability Center (SJAC), which documented 23 cases of child recruitment in northeast Syria between 2020 and 2023, one of the Revolutionary Youth group’s most common recruitment methods is to identify school children through cultural activities in their own centers. “They often deceive children, convincing them to enroll in educational or vocational courses or even promising job opportunities, while the real purpose is recruitment,” the group said. A July 2023 report by Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) found that out of 52 cases of child recruitment that they documented in SDF areas in 2023 alone, the Revolutionary Youth was responsible for 43.
In June 2023, an official from the Revolutionary Youth admitted to the Associated Press (AP) that the group recruits children but denied any forced conscription, stating that children voluntarily join and are only sent to armed service if they choose to after participating in educational training.
A spokesperson for an SDF-affiliated child protection office also acknowledged to the AP that child recruitment in SDF-controlled areas was ongoing but emphasized that the complaint mechanism was effective, noting that the SDF returned four children to their families in early 2023, and that others were found to have been recruited by armed groups that are not part of the SDF. Under international law, the SDF is required to take action against child recruitment by any armed group under its control.
