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Yasmeen, an orphan, from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in the city of Aleppo, was drafted on November 27, 2019. The SDF ignored the appeal of the teenage girl\u2019s mother, who demanded that the forces demobilize her daughter who is yet a minor. The mother Laila Koto, 43, narrated the following to STJ:
\u201cOn that day, my daughter went out to visit a friend and did not return. Soon, I learned that the Women\u2019s Protection Units had recruited her. I referred to all the military centers of the Autonomous Administration to retrieve my daughter, but they refused to let her go. They said: \u2018She came of her own free will. So, we will not return her\u2019. I did all I could to persuade them, but all my efforts failed. I even threatened them to set fire to my body if they do not give me back my daughter. Still, they did not respond.\u201d
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Sultana Bakr, 16, from the town of \u015eiy\u00ea district \/ Sheikh al-Hadid in rural Afrin, had a similar fate. Living with her family in the village of Ma\u2019arat al-Musalamiyeh, al-Shahba rea in northern rural Aleppo, Sultana was enlisted by the SDF on January 7, 2020. As her relatives\u2019 efforts to free her, being a minor, were all doomed to fail, Sultana was yet kept as a recruit within SDF\u2019s ranks to the date this report was written, on March 31, 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Recruited on February 23, 2019, Aisha Ibrahim, 15, has also been held by the SDF to the date this report was prepared, on March 31, 2020. Her family appealed to the YPJ in Tal Rifaat, northern Aleppo, to demobilize their daughter, who was enlisted less than a year after the family fled from the city of Afrin triggered by the offensive Peace Spring.
Aisha was not the only family member to get recruited, for the YPJ had also recruited her sister Amina Ibrahim in Afrin in 2013, when she was 13 years old. Commenting on this, a member of the family, which is today based in Aleppo city, told STJ:
\u201cAisha\u2019s father, Mohammad Ibrahim, had a heart attack after his daughter was recruited by the Women\u2019s Protection Units. He grieved over her absence, especially since his other daughter, Amina, was previously recruited by the same group. The father, today, is confined to a wheelchair and suffers heart-related issues.\u201d
He added:
\u201cFor more than a year, Mazikin Hasso, Aisha\u2019s mother, has been approaching the SDF centers and camps in search of her daughter, seeking those established in Aleppo and al-Shahba. She also provided several officials of the SDF with documents proving that her daughter is a minor, but none of her efforts seemed to pay so far. The SDF is refusing to demobilize Aisha, on the pretext that she applied to join its ranks and that she did so on her own free will.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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It is the second time that the YPJ recruits Aisha, the source explained, as it had previously enlisted her in the city of Afrin in the second half of 2017. Back then,
however, she was discharged less than a month into her recruitment, succumbing to the demands of her parents, who reported that she is a minor.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Geneva-based Human Rights Watchdog called Syrians for Truth and Justice have released a special report documenting cases of recruitment of minors in Syria. Operating in Northeastern Syria, the SDF has not yet shown full commitment to preventing child recruitment, even though, given the blessings of the Autonomous Administration, it had signed an action plan …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,172,119,170,125],"class_list":["post-1614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-child-soldiers","tag-human-rights-violation","tag-sdf","tag-syria","tag-violation"],"yoast_head":"\n