By Faisal Abu Bakr | 2025-05-08

ADEN -- Children attending Houthi summer camps designed to prepare them for the battlefront have been subjected to physical and sexual assaults that have proven fatal in some cases, human rights experts in Yemen said.

In February, a Houthi supervisor assaulted a boy at Abu Lahoum camp in the Malh area of Sanaa's Nihm district, leading to his eventual death, per the Yemeni Commission for Monitoring Human Rights Violations (Rasd Coalition).

Radad Saleh Ali Saeed Ghaleb was recruited to attend the camp through his brother and a local Houthi mobilization and recruitment supervisor.

He did not want to be there, the Rasd Coalition said, noting that several children recently refused to attend the camps for various reasons.

On February 8, the camp supervisor assaulted Radad, hitting him on the head and in the nose.

He was not given first aid or allowed to leave the camp, as he wished, but was kept there for two days, until he began bleeding profusely.

He later died in hospital.

Even after the incident, the Houthis continued to pressure teachers in al-Hodeidah province to send their students to summer camps, threatening them with the loss of their jobs, Khabar News Agency reported April 29.

Radad's case is one of a number of such incidents, lawyer Ishraq al-Maqtari of the National Commission to Investigate Alleged Violations of Human Rights told Al-Fassel.

Children "are subjected to physical assaults, as well as assaults by Houthi supervisors, including beatings and violence, in addition to harassment and, unfortunately, sexual assault," she said.

'Human reservoir'

These practices have been "a policy and approach" for the Houthis since their coup of September 2014, she said, but have become more prevalent in the provinces of Sanaa, Dhamar, Amran and Ibb.

These provinces have become the group's "human reservoir," particularly for young children, whom the Houthis exploit for military operations and deprive of their rights to education, health and all other children's rights, al-Maqtari said.

She pointed to a recent incident in Raymah province's Bilad al-Taam district where the Houthis "forcibly entered all homes and forced neighborhood leaders to screen families and those with children aged 11 and above" for the camps.

Deputy Minister of Justice Faisal al-Majeedi warned that through the summer camps, the Houthis have brainwashed a new generation of young people.

The camps are like "sectarian seminaries" that promote the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), which calls for allegiance to Iran's leader Ali Khamenei, he told Al-Fassel.

"We have observed cases of returnees from Houthi camps who are hostile to their families and fight them and members of society for the sake of the Houthi sectarian ideology," he said.