This Ramadan, Houthis in Yemen are speeding up recruitment of child soldiers

On a quiet winter Saturday morning in January 2026, children walked along dirt roads in a small village in the Al-Udayn district of Yemen's Ibb governorate, carrying their school bags and laughing like children everywhere. Nothing suggested the school, supposedly the safest place in a child's life, could become a site of death.

That day, 31 January, Mohammed Adel, 14, did not return home. He died inside his school, shot by a classmate during live weapons training as part of a course held at Abdullah bin Masoud School in Al-Udayn district.

"The incident was not an accidental mistake, as some tried to portray on social media," says M.W., a teacher at the school who requested anonymity for safety reasons. "It was the logical result of a long process of introducing war into educational spaces. We warned about this before the Houthis entered our area."

The tragedy that should have alarmed parents across the region met with fearful silence. "Everyone speaks in whispers, but no one wants to raise their voice, including the child's family, not because the pain is less than it should be, but because the fear is greater than they can bear," the teacher explains. "In an environment where speaking is seen as a political act requiring accountability, silence becomes survival."

Not far from Ibb, another scene unfolded at Al-Amiri Mosque in western Sanaa. After Friday prayers on 23 January 2026, an activity organiser took the microphone and invited worshippers, including children, to attend a practical lecture on medium weapons and their use in general mobilisation. The invitation was not secret but broadcast through open loudspeakers, echoing across the densely populated neighbourhood.

Inside the mosque, where verses of tranquillity should resonate, the discussion turned to bombs and detonation mechanisms. Some attendees later said they feared one might explode during the demonstration. The fear was not of a distant enemy but of an immediate possibility, an error that could transform a house of God into an explosion site. A minority considered it a valuable lesson for their children, preparing them to use weapons and confront any aggression against the homeland.

Scale of child recruitment

UN estimates indicate Houthis exploit schools in approximately 12 governorates for child recruitment, while religious centre activities expand to include more youth. This occurs amid a complete absence of effective international oversight and strict restrictions on humanitarian aid access to Houthi areas.

"Introducing weapons into schools is not a passing detail but a manifestation of militarising society in the militia era," says Tawfiq al-Hamidi, head of SAM Organisation for Rights and Liberties. "The school, which should be a space for building knowledge and a balanced personality, gradually transforms into a space for reproducing violence. When weapons are displayed to children as part of lessons, their presence becomes familiar, and guns lose their exceptional status."

Al-Hamidi warns that children naturally learn through repetition and habituation.

"When a child sees weapons at school, hears about them in mosques, and receives discourse linking their use to religious or patriotic duty, the idea of violence imprints on their consciousness before they possess the tools to critique it. An entire generation loses the natural concept of childhood and grows up believing weapons are a natural extension of themselves," he noted.

The issue extends beyond psychological normalisation, al-Hamidi added, "Using schools for military activities raises dropout rates, reduces real education opportunities, and affects human development. When the future is reduced to a combat path, children are denied the chance to become doctors, engineers, or teachers. Ambition is redefined to become linked with martyrdom on battlefields, not academic certificates."

Political analyst Dr Adel al-Shuja'a views the phenomenon not as a circumstantial war measure but as part of a long-term project to reshape society.

"This is not just about mobilising energies for battlefronts but rebuilding the Yemeni person on closed ideological foundations," he explains. "The goal is not merely military victory but manufacturing absolute loyalty transcending the concept of the state itself."

Schools transform from places that build citizens into centres for indoctrinating a specific narrative about history and identity, al-Shuja'a argues. "The past is presented through a unilateral perspective, patriotism is reduced to group belonging, loyalty becomes the criterion for citizenship, and society's psychological neutrality breaks," he said.

Balqees al-Lahabi, researcher at the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies, agrees that education is the most sensitive front in any ideological project. "Through education, you ensure the idea's continuity—through curricula, activities, and daily rituals, consciousness is reshaped," she said.

The focus on children and youth is no coincidence, al-Shuja'a explains. "They are most susceptible to moulding and least able to resist ready-made narratives. When a child is raised believing the world divides between absolute right and absolute wrong, and that weapons are the only guarantor of right, they grow up seeing violence as a moral duty, not a forced choice."

Most dangerous, in al-Shuja'a's view, is producing "a war human—a generation that knows no life outside the conflict circle. When the war stops, this person finds themselves without a sense of identity. For them, peace is not a return to normal life but a loss of role and meaning. Here lies the post-war dilemma: How can you integrate a generation raised on guns into a society seeking stability?"

Al-Lahabi warns that militarising education represents "booby-trapping the future. Sustainable peace cannot be built upon generations raised on closed mobilisation discourse. Every child pulled from a study seat to military training space is a double loss—for them and for society."

Ramadan intensification

SAM Organisation for Rights and Liberties documented a seasonal pattern in which child and youth recruitment intensifies after the school year ends and at the beginning of Ramadan, exploiting the religious density and symbolic nature of mobilisation discourse. The group's leader appears in repeated Ramadan speeches, while mass activities and closed courses serve as recruitment channels.

The organisation indicated that targeting takes multiple forms, from inflammatory rhetoric to quasi-military activities, benefiting from the fragile economic situation and disrupted education, thereby increasing recruitment susceptibility and threatening the long-term social fabric.

Nadia al-Sakkaf, an independent researcher and Yemen's first Minister of Information, notes that intensifying these activities during Ramadan gives them an amplified symbolic dimension. "Ramadan is a spiritual month par excellence. When its symbolism is invested in mobilisation discourse, the link between the sacred and weapons is strengthened. This link is difficult to dismantle later because it transcends politics into faith itself," the researcher stressed.

Social media becomes an additional arena for reproducing discourse, al-Sakkaf observes, "used to amplify mobilisation messages or defame dissenters, reinforcing a climate of self-censorship where silence becomes the safe choice."

According to al-Hamidi, documenting these violations is hindered by field restrictions, fear of retaliation, weak independent monitoring, the politicisation of the accountability file within international institutions, and declining UN momentum. "This makes converting evidence into effective accountability pathways a slow process, despite increasing indicators of the phenomenon's danger to future stability," al-Hamidi said.

Al-Sakkaf points out that international pressure becomes limited in impact, saying, "Condemnations and reports are insufficient unless coupled with concrete measures. Difficult economic conditions, poverty, and displacement make many families more fragile. When choices are limited, mobilisation discourse becomes more capable of attraction."

Even in internationally recognised government-controlled areas, al-Sakkaf notes weak institutional structure and absence of a clear media strategy, placing children's issues at the forefront of priorities. "Because the power struggle overwhelms investment in education, the vacuum remains, and the battle over children's consciousness continues without real confrontation," she added.

Al-Lahabi indicates that the absence of a comprehensive national educational philosophy grounded in respect for rights and freedoms opens the door to the creation of identity-distorted generations.

"When there is no comprehensive national framework, narrow narratives fill the void. Instead of education being a space for building pluralism, it transforms into a tool for ensuring loyalty," al-Lahabi remarked.

The result, according to al-Sakkaf, is society being drained from within, saying, "Between continuous ideological mobilisation in Houthi-controlled areas and institutional and media weakness in internationally recognised government areas, childhood protection becomes more fragile. War is no longer just military engagement; it is long-term mental reformulation."

Even if war stops someday, its effects will not, al-Sakkaf warns: "The generation that grew up seeing weapons at school, hearing about them in mosques, and circulating them on phones through social media will carry this experience. Most dangerous is that the values of coexistence and pluralism will not return automatically. They will need a long effort to restore."

Both al-Sakkaf and al-Lahabi conclude that peace in Yemen under such conditions will not be achieved through political agreement alone, but will require a complex, long-term cultural and educational process, including redefining schools as safe spaces, returning the mosque to its spiritual role, and restoring the concept of an inclusive state.

This story was published in collaboration with Egab.