The new campaign of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to recruit children as young as 12 for patrols and security checkpoints has been widely condemned. Military recruitment and use of children is a grave violation of children’s rights and a war crime when children are under 15.
The world has come a long way in just a few decades. Today, we have treaties prohibiting the conscription or use of child soldiers in armed conflict and courts to hold those responsible to account. Both the International Criminal Court and the Special Court of Sierra Leone have convicted people, from Congolese warlords to the former Liberian President Charles Taylor, for conscripting and using children under age 15 in war. The Child Soldiers Treaty (an optional protocol under the Convention on the Rights of the Child), ratified by 173 countries, prohibits the conscription of children under age 18 or their use in hostilities. Iran has signed although not ratified it.
Yet more work is needed. Recruiting and using children ages 15-17 is not consistently recognized as a war crime, nor is recruitment outside of situations formally classified as armed conflicts. This excludes situations like Haiti, where criminal groups recruit children to transport weapons, act as lookouts, and participate in kidnapping and fighting. Some 30 to 50 percent of these criminal group members are under 18. Save the Children says children have been recruited for a pair of sneakers.
Countries drafting a new international treaty on crimes against humanity could close that gap. Crimes against humanity are criminal offenses like murder, torture, rape, and slavery committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. Unlike war crimes, they are crimes during peacetime as well as war.
In May 2025, 38 organizations and child rights experts, including Human Rights Watch, endorsed a set of proposals rooted in law and jurisprudence to ensure that a future convention protects children. This month, a new paper from Princeton University’s Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination argues that recruiting and using children should be among those crimes.
Given global efforts to end the use of child soldiers in war, it shouldn’t be hard to take the next step. Countries have until April 30 to submit proposals to amend the draft treaty. They should use the opportunity to support introducing recruitment and use of children under 18 as a crime against humanity.
