Iranian Forces Are Recruiting Children as Young as 12 as 'Volunteers' in Security Roles: Report

As military conflicts in the Middle East continue, reports of an 11-year-old boy who was recently killed in a drone strike illustrate a new aspect of the war.

Iranian media outlets reported that Alireza Jafari, a fifth-grade student, recently died at a checkpoint run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran during recent clashes involving the United States, Israel and Iran.

According to reports, Jafari died in what authorities described as a drone attack. His mother told media outlets her son was accompanying his father, who served at the checkpoint, due to staff shortages and was helping volunteer militia patrols "maintain the security of Tehran and its people" when they were killed on March 11.

Rumors about the IRGC recruiting children and young adults were confirmed by a BBC World investigation and by an IRGC official, who said the organization enrolls "volunteers" aged 12 and older.

Similarly, eyewitnesses told the BBC they have seen children, some of them armed, in security roles in the capital and other cities nearby.

Rahim Nadali, a member of the IRGC's Greater Tehran Muhammad Rasulollah Corps, said in an interview with Iran's Defa Press News Agency that the new Homeland Defender Fighter for Iran program would assign children to various duties to support the organization's goal of defending their communities, including patrols and deployment at checkpoints.

Despite a government-imposed internet outage in Iran, the BBC spoke to four eyewitnesses who confirmed seeing children under 18 at checkpoints in Tehran, as well as in the nearby cities of Karaj and Rasht.

"He was holding a gun at the cars. He and the others were stopping cars and searching them. He was short and slight," one of the witnesses told the BBC.

Similarly, a 20-year-old woman who lives in Rasht told the outlet she saw young people on duty in a square earlier this month.

"They were wearing masks so their faces were covered. But it's obvious that they are children; I can see it from their eyes. They are short as well. They stand in front of those adult forces. I feel pity for them and I get scared at the same time."

The recruitment of children under 18 has raised alarms among human rights organizations. In a recent statement, Human Rights Watch said the military recruitment and use of children is a grave violation of children's rights and a war crime when those involved are under 15.

"There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds," said Bill Van Esveld, associate children's rights director at Human Rights Watch. "What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children's lives for some extra manpower."

As noted by the human rights watchdog, Jafari's death is not an isolated case.

For many years, Iran has enlisted children under 18 in the Basij force, a volunteer militia controlled by the IRGC. The organization says Iranian officials in the 1980s documented the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of children to fight in the Iran-Iraq war, with tens of thousands killed.

"The officials involved in this reprehensible policy are putting children at risk of serious and irreversible harm and themselves at risk of criminal liability," Van Esveld said. "Senior leaders who fail to put a stop to this can make no claim to care for Iran's children."