Watchdog urges UN inquiry into Iran recruiting Afghan kids to fight in Syria

Beirut [Lebanon], Oct.1 (ANI): A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report today revealed that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been recruiting Afghan immigrant children, as young as 14, to fight in Syria and urged the United Nations to investigate the matter.

The non-governmental organization said that the United Nations should consider adding the IRGC to its annual list of perpetrators of violations against children based on evidence of child recruitment under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities, which under international law is a war crime.

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" is a war crime. Iran is not a party to the Rome Statute, but is bound by customary international law which also provides that recruitment of children under age 15 is a war crime.

The HRW revealed in their report that the Afghan children have fought in the Fatemiyoun division, an exclusively Afghan armed group supported by Iran that fights alongside government forces in the Syrian conflict.

The report said that the HRW researchers reviewed photographs of tombstones in Iranian cemeteries where the authorities buried combatants killed in Syria, and identified eight Afghan children who apparently fought and died in Syria.

"Iranian media reports also corroborated some of these cases and reported at least six more instances of Afghan child soldiers who died in Syria. For two of the reported cases, researchers reviewed photographs of tombstones that indicated the individual was over the age of 18, but family members of these deceased fighters told Iranian media that they were children who had misrepresented their age in order to join the Fatemiyoun division. This indicates that instances of Iran recruiting children to fight in Syria are likely more prevalent," the statement read.

"Iran should immediately end the recruitment of child soldiers and bring back any Afghan children it has sent to fight in Syria," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

"Rather than preying on vulnerable immigrant and refugee children, the Iranian authorities should protect all children and hold those responsible for recruiting Afghan children to account."

In 2015, the Interior Ministry estimated that there were 2.5 million Afghans in Iran, many of them without residency papers. Human Rights Watch previously documented cases of Afghan refugees in Iran who "volunteered" to fight in Syria in the hope of gaining legal status for their families.

Since 2013, Iran has supported and trained thousands of Afghans, at least some of them undocumented immigrants, as part of the Fatemiyoun division, a group that an Iranian newspaper close to the government describes as volunteer Afghan forces, to fight in Syria.

In May 2015, DefaPress, a news agency close to Iran's armed forces, reported that the Fatemiyoun had been elevated from a brigade to a division. There are no official public statistics on its size, but according to an interview published in the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Tasnim News, it has about 14,000 fighters.

By reviewing photographs of their tombstones, Human Rights Watch documented eight Afghan children who fought and died in Syria. Five of them, one as young as 14, are buried in the Martyr's Section of Tehran's Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery.

Writing on the epitaphs of the tombstones indicates that they were all probably killed in combat in Syria and that all of them were below the age of 18 at the time of their deaths. Human Rights Watch was able to document three more cases, of a 17-year-old, a 15-year-old, and another 17-year-old, who were buried in Alborz, Tehran, and Isfahan provinces, respectively(ANI)