South Sudan’s Conflicting Forces Still Recruiting Children- HRW

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a report that the South Sudan government and rebel forces are both recruiting children as young as 13 to fight in the country’s civil war.

The claim was rejected by the government.

“Despite renewed promises by both government and opposition forces that they will stop using child soldiers, both sides continue to recruit and use children in combat,” HRW’s Africa director, Daniel Bekele said.

The South Sudanese’s Minister for Information, Michael Makuei, has dismissed the report, saying there were plenty of men still able to fight.

“How can we recruit child soldiers at a time when we have sufficient manpower?” he questioned. “We have no child soldiers.”

But Human Rights Watch said that government forces were “taking children, in some cases, such as in the northern war-damaged town of Malakal, from right outside the United Nations compound”.

Malakal, in oil-rich Upper Nile State, has changed hands six times since the war started in December 2013, and 21,000 civilians have sought shelter and safety behind the UN’s barbed-wire fences.

The ruined city is currently under government control and HRW said some children were forcibly recruited from outside the gates of the UN base.