“Children after the killing and wounding of their parents on the Houthi battlefields … the obligatory tendency to beg and front.”

The phenomenon of child begging has worsened in Yemen under the control of the terrorist Houthi militia in its north, in the province of Sana’a, where young beggars are distributed on the streets, in tours and at the gates of mosques and markets from early morning until evening in light of the spread of poverty and hunger and the loss of the breadwinner of the family, either dead or wounded, or languishing in the neighborhood. The Houthi terrorist gang says it is carrying out campaigns from time to time to arrest and deport them to the front lines to meet the same fate as their fathers.

Ibn Sareeh

Walid, a six-year-old boy who left school to wander the streets day and night among passers-by crying, telling people they were starving in order to get the price of food from them.

He says: (in the middle): “I live with my family after my father died on the fronts, where I was forced to fight with the Houthis, and she left me with my younger sister and my illiterate mother in a rented house. We did not find food and nobody asked about us.”

He continued: “I went out to beg to raise the amount of money to pay the rent at the end of the month. As for food, I get it from leftovers from customers in restaurants, and so every day.”

physical abuse

Child beggars in Yemen are exposed to sexual and physical exploitation, numerous dangers on the roads and transport, and constant physical exhaustion, because the children’s structure is still in the process of growth and completion, and they also suffer abuse and deprivation. education, not to mention the effects of displacement from one region to another due to the indiscriminate attacks carried out by the Houthi militia Terrorist drones attack cities and villages, leaving behind many innocent victims.

Absence of the breadwinner

As the number of child beggars increased in northern Yemen, which was under the control of the Houthi militia in Sana’a due to hunger, poverty, the absence of breadwinners and the inability of women to go out to work under any circumstances.

Most of these children live in simple homes that consist of one room most of the time and then leave school to spend more than five hours begging outside the home.

official statistics

The number of beggars in Yemen, according to a study conducted by the Center for Social Studies and Labor Research in Sanaa, in the north of Yemen, reached one and a half million at the end of last year, and most of them are children.

Estimates by the Houthi-controlled Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood in Sana’a show that the number of beggars among women and children has clearly increased recently.

Feeling overwhelmed

Psychologists reduce: “Children who are on the street are accompanied by a feeling of oppression by difficult conditions and can resort to anything in front of their eyes, such as drugs.

Rights of the child

The General Declaration on the Rights of the Child stipulates that “a child must be secured and protected from forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation, and must not be subjected to trafficking in any way, and must not be employed before reaching the appropriate age, and must not engage in a trade or work that is harmful to his health or interferes with his education and physical and mental development, as well as moral

Just as a Yemeni child has the right to live like the rest of his peers.

innocent children

With the innocence of children, Ahmed, aged 8, says: “Oh my God, the Houthis are dying. He stopped my father’s salary and made me leave school to work and help my mother after my father was killed on the front. Al-Houthi us promised to make us and my brothers finish our education, because we are the children of martyrs, but we have not seen any of them today. We have resorted to begging, which makes people mistreat us and I feel like I am not human.”

The Houthis have made us beggars

The girl said: “Mona, aged 12, left school and went to the street to beg to feed my mother and my wounded father, whose feet were cut off on the Houthi fronts, after me and all my sisters tried to find work. , but we didn’t find anyone who would accept us to work for him, so we started begging.”.

We left our schools, and I wasn’t safe from harassment, especially when I work late at night.”

Hunger and the Houthis

“Omar cries” child: 10 years old, displaced from Al-Hodeidah governorate, west coast of northern Yemen. He says: “The Houthis destroyed our house, my father, mother and brothers died, and I was left alone. I fled to Sana’a to seek refuge because I was tired of hunger, and I said that I would work and spend on myself, but I found nothing wrong in front of me, selling handkerchiefs, and I remained begging, selling handkerchiefs to survive.”

Economic situation

While Dr. Najat Abdullah, a specialist sociologist from the University of Sana’a, explained that the phenomenon of begging among children in our country has spread in a thorny way, and it is a matter of a low economic situation in it, and that is why our country is characterized by low income and unemployment rate in light of job shortages, wage cuts and rapidly rising costs of living.

Najat confirms, “The recent emergence of this phenomenon also sheds light on the complexities associated with it.

and that these child beggars engage in this practice in order to support themselves or their families in order to escape from starvation.”

abduction of children

Abbas Al-Sabri says the Houthi terrorist militia abducts, from time to time, dozens of homeless children from many neighborhoods in the capital Sana’a and the provinces and hides them, and their families do not know their fate unless they return dead.

He confirmed that the Houthi militia had abducted dozens of child beggars, including some workers collecting waste and metal, over the past two weeks.

He said militia members kidnapped children and put them in sectarian courses, then sent them to the West Bank front, particularly in Hodeid.

It is worth mentioning that most of the abducted children are orphans and do not have foster parents, and are among the homeless who do not have a home.

An Associated Press investigative report found that the Houthis have recruited 18,000 children into their ranks since the war began in 2014, according to what a senior military official in the group told the agency on condition of anonymity.