UN condemns ISIS for brutality against children

Children often pay a heavy price in armed conflicts, but in Iraq, the violence of ISIS militants has been especially brutal. Children have been beaten, massacred, crucified, sold into slavery, and even used as child soldiers, according to a new United Nations report.

Children as young as 12 are being trained as soldiers, used as suicide bombers and executioners, according to the report issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

“We have had reports of children, especially children who are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding,” committee expert Renate Winter told Reuters. “There was a video placed (online) that showed children at a very young age, approximately 8 years of age and younger, to be trained already to become child soldiers.”

International Christian Concern Middle East regional manager Todd Daniels called the findings disturbing.

The committee’s detailed report, based on accounts from multiple human rights organizations, also condemned the “systematic killing” of boys from ethnic and religious minority groups such as Christians, Turks, Kurds, and Yazidi.

Religious minorities have been “killed, tortured, raped, forced to convert to Islam, cut off from humanitarian assistance” by the militants, in an effort “suppress, permanently cleanse or expel, or in some instances, destroy these minority communities.” In some cases the boys were beheaded, crucified, or buried alive.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, has also physically and sexually abused a high number of children, and sold abducted women and children into slavery, the report said.

“ISIS has openly admitted to such acts, including an article in its English-language Dabiq magazine, giving a rationale based on the Quran and Islamic history for slavery of religious minorities, particularly the Yazidi community,” Daniels noted.

The militants’ brutality is not limited to Iraq. In the Syrian town of Kobane, ISIS tortured and abused 150 Kurdish boys, according to the Associated Press. Some of the boys were held hostage as long as six months. Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed some of the survivors and learned they were forced to watch beheading videos, undergo Islamic instruction, and learn verses from the Quran.

“Those who didn’t conform to the program were beaten,” one of the boys told HRW. “They beat us with a green hose or a thick cable with wire running through it. They also beat the soles of our feet.”

HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth recently blamed the rise of groups like ISIS on governments ignoring human rights violations.

“Protecting human rights and ensuring democratic accountability are key to resolving them,” Roth said.

In both Iraq and Syria, where ISIS has set up an Islamic caliphate, the militants took advantage of governmental indifference to abuses in order to portray itself as an alternative, according to Al Jazeera.

“Rather than treating human rights as a chafing restraint, policymakers worldwide would do better to recognize them as moral guides offering a path out of crisis and chaos,” Roth said.