Call for Sudan to stop recruiting minors in South Kordofan

Legal rights activist Jalila Khamis strongly condemned the forced recruitment by the Sudan Armed Forces of minors in South Kordofan.

She called via Radio Dabanga upon the Sudanese government to stop “those human rights violations, and let these children return to their classes, instead of dying at the South Kordofan battlefields”.

Khamis further described the situation of the displaced in South Kordofan, as “catastrophic”. “As a result of the continued aerial bombardments by the Sudanese Air Force on the countryside, large numbers of villagers, most of them women and children, fled their homes, and took refuge in caves in the mountains.”

Last year, Radio Dabanga reported that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces forcibly recruited more than 3,000 boys between 15 and 17 years old from South Kordofani areas under control of the government. They were transferred to military camps near Khartoum for training, the SPLM-N spokesman for the Nuba Mountains, Jatigo Amoga Delman, told Radio Dabanga.

A field commander of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), Brig. Gen. Kuku Idris, told Nuba Reports last January that the Sudanese government continued recruiting minors to fight the rebels in South Kordofan. He backed his claim with pictures of alleged child soldiers in Sudan Armed Forces uniforms, and their identity cards.

Related article: Sudan's militia recruits more than 3,000 minors in South Kordofan (27 August 2014)