The YPG/PKK terror group, which has long been criticized for abducting or recruiting children, has once again become the main topic of conversation of such human rights violations and crimes.
Mustafa Ekici, a coordinator at state-owned broadcaster TRT Kurdi, on Sunday reported from his personal Twitter account that the YPG/PKK on Friday abducted a 14-year-old child from northern Syria’s Al-Darbasiyah, a town on the Syrian border opposite Turkey's Şenyurt in Mardin province.
“When the family wanted their girl back, they said this is the girl’s decision,” Ekici also tweeted.
In another Twitter message, Ekici said that the YPG/PKK also abducted a 10-year-old child from northern Syria’s Aleppo on June 5.
Kurdish mothers whose children were abducted by the YPG/PKK have been staging a sit-in protest in southeastern Turkey’s Diyarbakır city in front of the pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) office for 10 months.
The YPG/PKK's use of child soldiers has been repeatedly documented and criticized by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The group reportedly tricks families into giving up their children or outright kidnaps them, taking them to training camps where they are denied contact with their families.
In 2018, a United Nations annual report on children in armed conflict revealed 224 cases of child recruitment by the YPG/PKK between January and December in 2017, a fivefold increase compared with previous years.
Human Rights Watch also documented that the terrorist group continues to recruit children despite objections from families and preventing parents from getting in touch with their kids.
Human rights organizations have also documented the YPG/PKK's using torture and deliberately disrupting educational and health services.
The Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War prohibits the use of children under age 15 as soldiers.
