Sanaa, Yemen – A month ago, a Houthi recruiter in his 40s, approached 16-year-old Abdulkarim in Sanaa and told him about the possibility of being sent to the front line in Marib, where fighting was raging against pro-government forces.
Abdulkarim was promised a Kalashnikov, and a one-month military training course and 50,000 Yemeni rials ($100), slightly above the local average.
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In a country where more than four in five rural children are multidimensionally deprived, the offer was a tempting one. While Abdulkarim was ready to fight, his father, 39, did not approve and so Abdulkarim stayed in Sanaa.
“My father advised me that survival on active front lines nowadays is minimal, and going there is a sure step to death, injury or captivity. I told the Houthi man of my father’s objection, and he left,” Abdulkarim told Al Jazeera.
As Yemen experiences its most intense fighting in years, a new wave of child recruitment in the country is taking shape.
Ali Hazazi, head of the Human Rights and Civil Society Organizations Department at the Office of the President in Aden, told Al Jazeera that his organisation had documented 62 child recruitment cases in the second quarter of 2026 in Houthi-controlled provinces.
“This reflects a systematic policy of child recruitment. The documented cases are just a fraction, as many go unreported,” he said.
Against the backdrop of major offensives on Houthi positions, pro-government forces have captured many child soldiers, including on the al-Dhale front, he said.
“Those children panicked and collapsed when they fell into the hands of government troops, who reassured them that they would not be hurt,” said Hazazi.
A fighter fires an assault rifle as Yemeni government and Saudi-backed National Resistance Forces battle Houthi fighters on the Kadha front, west of Taiz, Yemen, September 8, 2026 [AFP]Ahmed, 17, has been on the front lines in Hodeidah – a strategically important Yemeni Red Sea port – since May, fighting with the Houthis. He manages to call his family once a week and recently returned home for a week’s leave.
“Members of the Houthi group were mobilising fighters from our area in April. Ahmed said he was ready to join the war and insisted on going. I did not oppose him,” his father, Ismael, 48, who has 10 children, told Al Jazeera.
“Ahmed is a man, no longer a child. I want him to try his luck in this experience. And his monthly salary of 45,000 Yemeni rials, about $80, would help us cover living expenses.”
Ahmed spent his first month learning how to use an assault rifle, shoot from long range and move through areas with landmines.
“He is a young trained fighter today, but I am still worried about his fate, as fighting on the Hodeidah front intensifies,” said Ismael.
The Houthis launched a major offensive against pro-government lines in western Taiz and southern Hodeidah last week, with more than 100 fighters from both sides killed since Thursday.
For some families, the decision to allow children to join the fighting is shaped by a combination of economic hardship, social pressure and ideology.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that the circumstances surrounding child recruitment in Yemen differ from those in other conflicts.
“In many cases, children are subjected to ideological indoctrination, recruited without meaningful compensation, and sent to the front lines with little or no military training,” Nagi told Al Jazeera.
“Sending a child to a military camp or the front line can sometimes provide the family with some form of material support or irregular income. This may not be a stable salary or a clearly defined package of benefits, but for families living in extreme poverty, even limited assistance can appear better than having no income at all.”
More than half of Yemen’s population does not have reliable access to enough food, with six million people facing “emergency” levels of deprivation that border on famine, the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the UN Security Council in remarks last month.
Social pressure can create a cycle of mobilisation and revenge, with some Yemeni families seeing fighting as a social obligation.
“When a family member is killed, the conflict can become deeply personal,” Nagi told Al Jazeera. “In some cases, this includes children. One death can lead to further mobilisation, which produces more casualties and, in turn, further recruitment.”
Families who strongly align politically with a particular armed group may not see anything inherently wrong in sending their children to fight for the cause. “Instead, they may view it as an act of loyalty, sacrifice or defence of their community,” he said.
Tawfiq Al-Humaidi, head of SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, which monitors and documents human rights violations across Yemen, said that although the majority of child recruitment cases are happening in Houthi-controlled areas, the movement is not the only actor in this phenomenon.
“The group seeks to replenish the losses of fighters and prepares for new rounds of fighting, and this makes child recruitment an ideal option,” Al-Humaidi told Al Jazeera.
Young Yemenis are often recruited at 17, an age that social and tribal norms equate with manhood, virility, and psychological and mental maturity, he said, and when children traditionally begin to carry weapons.
Young men play near a beached fishing boat at a site in Al-Ghaydah district, in Al-Mukalla, Yemen, September 6, 2026 [Abdulnasser Alseddik/AP]SAM reported that 11,310 children were recruited or used across 19 Yemeni governorates between 2014 and 2023, including 6,269 children aged 8 to 11.
International law generally prohibits the recruitment and use of children under 18 in armed conflict. The use of children by the military in any situation under 15 is also banned under international humanitarian law.
In 2014, the Yemeni government signed an action plan with the UN to end and prevent the recruitment of children by the Yemeni Armed Forces. In 2022, the Houthis signed a similar UN action plan.
The Houthis have in the past denied enlisting children to fight. But Al-Humaidi said that children in Yemen still undertake military tasks such as guard duties, transporting ammunition, reconnaissance, laying landmines and direct combat.
“As a result, they are exposed to death, injury, and long-term psychological trauma. This is not the fault of children; the recruiters are the culprits,” he said.
“This creates a compounded set of violations: the recruitment of children, their ideological mobilisation, their deployment without adequate preparation, and the lack of any meaningful support or compensation for their families if they are killed.”
Al-Humaidi said that while action plans, such as those signed by the Houthis and Yemeni government, are important, they will not succeed if they remain mere political pledges that lack implementation mechanisms.
Effective measures are needed to prevent children from registering as fighters and to verify recruits’ ages, he said.
He added that child soldiers need effective demobilisation and rehabilitation, including access to education, and that military commanders need to be held accountable.
“The continuation of the war increases the risk, but this does not absolve any party of its responsibility to keep children away from the front lines,” said Al-Humaidi.
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