 Experts and human rights activists highlighted Thursday in Geneva the scourge of child recruitment in armed conflicts around the world, considering the Tindouf camps, southwest of Algeria, as a black spot for this practice, which is a grave violation of international humanitarian law.
At the seminar organized by the Independent Commission for Human Rights-Africa (NGO), on the sidelines of the 55th session of the Human Rights Council, participants called for resolute international action to put an end to child recruitment, which deeply affects the child's right to a normal and safe civilian upbringing, said Abdelkader Filali, President of the International Center for Human Rights (ICHR).
Abdelkader Filali, head of the International Center for the Prevention of Child Recruitment, based in Dakhla, spoke of an international market of supply and demand in which children are traded as commodities for sale and led to areas of armed conflict, explaining that the Tindouf camps, in southwestern Algeria, are part of a "list of shame" that includes a number of hotbeds of exploitation and recruitment of children.
The expert said that Polisario elements snatch children from their families between the ages of eight and nine to send them to paramilitary schools that separate them from their family and social environment and charge them with the ideology of violence and illusions of heroism, making them victims of permanent imbalances in their personality development and their value and behavioral system.
He mentioned a number of journalistic investigations and independent testimonies as well as the testimonies of victims who suffered from the hell of violations of children's rights, which paints a picture of a geopolitical space outside international standards and human rights conventions, calling for the adoption of an action program by the international community to promote the eradication of the phenomenon of child recruitment by 2040.
Presenting some aspects of the activities of the International Center for the Prevention of Child Recruitment, the expert stressed the importance of field work and listening to those concerned, highlighting that the center completed interviews with 115 child victims of forced recruitment during the period from November 2021 to March 2023.
For his part, Spanish human rights activist Pedro Altamirano described the general situation in Tindouf camps, in which the vulnerability of children is only one of the manifestations of its degradation, considering that the misery of vital public services, misappropriation of humanitarian aid and the state of total repression of various segments of the population create a dark scene for the environment in which children grow up deprived of the minimum rights guaranteed to them by international conventions.
The president of the Altamirano Foundation highlighted the situation of refugees in the Tindouf camps, noting that the host country, Algeria, insists on not allowing a census and obstructing the return of the detainees to their original areas in the Moroccan Sahara.
The human rights activist focused on the situation of women in terms of the rights stipulated in human rights charters and international humanitarian law, and the special care given to them in the face of forms of abuse, violence and sexual exploitation, stressing that women in the Tindouf camps are exposed to all these violations committed by the "Polisario" elements in full view of the Algerian authorities.
During the meeting, moderated by Moulay El Hassan Naji, President of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, the human rights activist said that the time has come to hold perpetrators of serious violations of international humanitarian law in the Tindouf camps accountable, concluding that this file is a real test of the effectiveness of justice in the international system.
News and events on Western Sahara issue/ CORCAS
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