October 28, Nairobi — After taking control of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur State in October 2023, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) arrested Abdallah A. M., well-known in the city, for not declaring his allegiance to them and cooperating with the Sudanese Army.
Abdallah remained in a RSF detention center located in the east of the city for three weeks before he was released. But he had to guarantee that his 15-year-old son would participate in the fighting alongside the RSF in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. Abdallah said his son was immediately put into training, and has been fighting in Khartoum since January.
Abdallah’s daughter, Dahab, told Darfur24 that alongside her brother, a number of his classmates from her neighborhood joined the RSF.
The story of Abdallah’s family is not unique — Darfur24 has been monitoring a number of cases of child recruitment by all the main parties to the conflict. Children are trained to carry weapons and thrown into the front lines of the conflict.
Last October, the United Nations expressed concern about the increased recruitment and use of vulnerable children by armed groups since the outbreak of the conflict between the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in April 2023. They released another statement in March calling for an end to the recruitment of child soldiers.
At the beginning of this year, activists also circulated pictures and video clips indicating the involvement of children in training camps for armed forces.
Now, it seems this is only continuing. As the RSF mobilized thousands of fighters to control the last strongholds of the SAF in Darfur, particularly in El Fasher city, it seems children have joined the fight.
“Even Cattle Don’t Get Lost Like This”
Another father, Haj Ahmed Ali who lives in Central Darfur state, told Darfur24 that he lost three children who joined the RSF to fight. The boys, aged between 16-18, allegedly snuck off to mobilize for the RSF in El Fasher.
A relative in El Fasher told him that they were all killed in an airstrike, which Haj is struggling to comprehend.
“He told me that he buried their remains with his own hands, but I did not believe him so I kept asking everyone who came from El Fasher,” Haj told Darfur24. “I do not want to believe that they were killed, as I have no one left but the girls.”
“Even cattle don’t get lost like this,” Haj added.
Meanwhile, mother Aisha Issa Ahmed, who was displaced last July from El Fasher to the town of Tawila, about 55 kilometers west of the city, said that she left her son Badr-Al-Dien, aged 15, to fight in the ranks of the SAF’s joint forces.
She told Darfur 24 that she does not feel guilty or remorseful for her son being in the ranks of the fighting. “There are dozens like Badr-Al-Dein fighting to protect El Fasher,” she said.
A SAF military source in El Fasher, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Darfur24 that there are dozens of children among the mobilized ranks who have voluntarily come to fight with the army.
Additionally, in the town of Tina on the Sudanese border with Chad, SAF and its allied movements has mobilized dozens of young children, where they are now wearing military uniforms and carrying Kalashnikov weapons on their shoulders. Allegedly most children recruited are given tasks such as cooking food, fetching water, being present at military quarters during the daytime, and being present in large numbers in the town market.
Legal Implications
Legal expert Shawgi Yagoub told Darfur24 that Sudanese Law prohibits the recruitment of children and their involvement in military and combat operations. The Criminal Law of 1991 imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for anyone who recruits a child under the age of 18 into an armed group.
Agreements signed by Sudan, such as the African Convention on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, strongly prohibit the recruitment of children.