7 min read Articles
Child Recruitment Practices Continue in Syria Before and After the Fall of Assad

Child Recruitment Practices Continue in Syria Before and After the Fall of Assad

In April 2024, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) published “She is Still a Child,” a report based on interviews with 22 families that documented 23 cases of child recruitment between August 2022 and June 2023. The interviews revealed a pattern of child recruitment in Northeast Syria by the Revolutionary Youth (RY), an affiliate of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). In this report, SJAC documented how the RY circumvented parents for the purposes of recruiting minors—often coercively—and transferred them to SDF-affiliated military and security groups, including the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), or the Asayish (internal security forces), for military training.

After the report was published, the context in Syria drastically changed when the Assad government was overthrown on December 8, 2024, and an interim government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa assumed control. The SDF/AANES then signed an agreement with the interim government in March 2025, committing to integrating SDF/AANES civil and military institutions with the interim government by the end of 2025.

Amidst this rapidly evolving context in Syria, SJAC continued to document child recruitment cases, witnessing an increase in the number of cases since SJAC’s last report was published in April 2024. This update provides a broad overview of the tens of cases SJAC has verified from the time the report was published in April 2024 until April 2025. It includes an analysis of various trends, the age and gender of children, and the location where recruitment occurred. Ultimately, SJAC hopes this analysis will support future accountability efforts and protect children from further recruitment.

Methodology

SJAC’s documenters verified child recruitment cases reported online or by directly communicating and confirming with families. For cases tracked online, SJAC documenters relied on at least two separate sources to confirm the child was recruited. While SJAC documenters are made aware of cases and review local media outlets, not all cases of child recruitment may be made known to SJAC, meaning more children than represented here have likely been recruited. Nonetheless, the numbers demonstrate that child recruitment remains a common practice and has, in fact, increased throughout the year and potentially in response to current events.

Uptick in Cases of Child Recruitment from April 2024-April 2025

Between April 2024 and April 2025, SJAC verified 49 new cases of child recruitment, with particular peaks during certain months. Specifically, a spike in the number of cases was recorded in July 2024 and March through April 2025.

SJAC has previously observed that child recruitment increases when the SDF perceives a security threat, and this observation may have resulted in both peaks documented throughout the reporting period. Specifically, in June 2024, the AANES was planning to conduct local elections but later postponed them to August, causing tension to rise in July between Kurdish groups and Türkiye. Recruitment may have thus increased in response to a perceived security threat, such as a potential Turkish invasion. As a result, 13 children were recruited in July 2024 alone, representing approximately 26% of the total number of cases recorded throughout the year.

Another increase in child recruitment occurred the next year in March and April 2025, during which 17 cases were verified in the two months compared to a total of 32 across the preceding ten months. Notably, the surge in cases occurred around the time the SDF and Syrian government reached a new agreement. The spike in cases may have therefore been the SDF/AANES reacting to perceived threats to their autonomy, resulting in the RY’s recruitment efforts accelerating ahead of full integration.

Violations by Age and Gender

The ages of recruited minors ranged from 12 to 17 years old, with a concentration among younger teens: approximately 69% of the children were under 15 years old at the time of recruitment. The number of younger children is notable because according to international humanitarian law, recruiting children under the age of 15 as soldiers is prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of Child and considered a war crime by the International Criminal Court.

Regarding the gender of recruited children, 63% of the 49 newly documented cases involved male children (31 cases), while 37% involved female children (18 cases).

Gender-based trends reveal that male and female minors were recruited at varying frequencies and that the recruitment of girls spiked in 2025. For example, SJAC documented a surge in male recruitment in July 2024, during which 12 boys were recruited in a single month and only one girl. In contrast, March to April 2025 saw the most significant increase in female recruitment: 7 girls were recruited in March while 5 additional girls were recruited in April. Prior to the agreement between the government and the SDF, only 6 cases of recruited girls were reported in total from April 2024 to the end of February 2025, demonstrating a sharp uptick in the recruitment of girls.

Location of Recruitment

All documented cases were attributed to the RY, though they recruited children across multiple governorates in Syria. The highest number of cases was recorded in Aleppo governorate (28 cases or 57%), followed by Hasakeh (15 cases or 31%) and finally Raqqa (6 cases or 12%). SJAC continues to investigate the cause of geographic variation.

Within Aleppo governorate, the majority of cases were in Kobani (12), then Aleppo city (7), Manbij (7), and Tal Rifaat (2). In Hasakeh, the majority of cases were in Hasakeh city (7), Qamishli (6), and then Al Darbasiyah (1). In Raqqa governorate, all cases were recorded in Raqqa city. After recruitment, children are typically transported to training camps in other regions, making it difficult for children to return to their governorate.

Conclusion

In summary, SJAC has documented that child recruitment cases continued up to and after the fall of the Assad government, with 49 new cases documented from April 2024 to April 2025. Over one-third of these cases occurred in March and April 2025, correlating with the signing of the agreement between SDF/AANES and the Syrian government. This sudden increase may indicate a broader pattern of child recruitment driven by instability in Syria. As the integration of SDF military forces remains unresolved at the time of publication, this leaves groups such as the RY operating within a more tenuous and uncertain framework, signaling that child recruitment may likely continue if further actions are not taken by authorities.

Steps must be taken to prevent the recruitment of additional children and facilitate the swift return of recruited children. In light of these findings, SJAC puts forward the following recommendations:

To the SDF and its affiliates:

  • Immediately cease all child recruitment activities. Prior and up to the integration of the SDF into the Syrian government’s military and civil institutions, any children known to be recruited should be safely returned to their parents.
  • Upon integration of the SDF into the Syrian government’s military and civil institutions, SDF leadership must coordinate with the Syrian government on the continued identification and safe return of the remaining children to their families by providing information on known military training camps that house children and the identities of children presumed to have been recruited.  
  • Share known identities of perpetrators of child recruitment and violence against children with the Syrian government to facilitate justice and accountability measures.

To the Syrian government:

  • Require that the RY be disbanded during the integration of military forces due to their ongoing institutional pattern of child recruitment. Individuals involved in recruitment should be arrested and prosecuted.
  • Uphold the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Syria has ratified, by condemning child recruitment practices continued by the RY and taking all feasible measures in its power to prevent any child recruitment activity.
  • Ensure that perpetrators of child recruitment and perpetrators of violence against children associated with armed forces are prosecuted in accordance with Law No. 21 Article 46, which prevents the use of recruitment of children in combat. Those suspected of committing crimes against children under international law should also receive attention in transitional justice mechanisms and should not be provided amnesties.
  • Establish a plan for preventing child recruitment that includes identifying and releasing all recruited children before and during integration of the SDF, training military forces on domestic and international laws that criminalize child recruitment, incorporating child protection measures in military doctrine and standard operating procedures, and designating an official entity for families to safely report cases of child recruitment.
  • Facilitate the identification of recruited children by appointing child protection specialists in security forces that can identify recruited children and provide child protection actors with regular and unimpeded access to military camps to verify there are no children.
  • When civil registry procedures are restarted in Syria, age assessment procedures must be paired with a universal birth registration that makes it possible to assess the age of potential children targeted for recruitment including refugees returning to Syria, internally displaced children, and minority communities at heightened risk of recruitment.

To the US and EU:

  • In bilateral communications, encourage the Syrian government and the SDF and its affiliates to investigate the occurrence of child recruitment in Northeast Syria and hold perpetrators accountable. US and EU policymakers should emphasize the prosecution of perpetrators and the disbandment of the RY as part of integration talks with the SDF.

___________________________

For more information or to provide feedback, please contact SJAC at [email protected] and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to SJAC’s newsletter for updates on our work