CAMERA Snapshots: Terrorist Groups Increase Child Recruitment Efforts | Camera

CAMERA Snapshots: Terrorist Groups Increase Child Recruitment Efforts | Camera

Islamic terrorist organizations are increasingly “targeting” children for recruitment, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a non-profit research group that focuses on radical Islamic groups.
IPT reports that children have become a “key target group” for Islamist-oriented terrorists that frequently use social media to advertise their new recruits. The use of children under the age of 15 as combatants violates the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Citing a report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), IPT notes that in the last year, “at least 89 male child soldiers were eulogized as martyrs on Twitter as well as the Islamic State’s [the U.S.-designated terrorist group also known as ISIS] official Telegram channel [a messaging app]. The child soldiers hailed from countries as varied as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, France and Australia.