Child soldiers: widespread participation in Sudan’s war

10 August 2025

An investigation conducted by Ayin Network in collaboration with the Sudan Human Rights Hub (SHRH) documents widespread recruitment of children by both sides in Sudan’s war. Some of the recruitment was voluntary, exploiting their families’ dire economic circumstances, while others were forced. The finding exposes another tragic aspect of the ongoing fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), now in its third year. It also places the future of an entire generation on a precarious, destructive path. 

Child soldiers are being recruited in the current war, despite Sudan’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict in 2005. This protocol prohibits the participation of children under the age of 18 in armed conflict, and only voluntary recruitment is permitted from the age of five to ten, in accordance with international humanitarian law. Armed groups, however, are bound by a stricter prohibition, including both voluntary and compulsory recruitment of those under the age of eighteen.

The phenomenon of child recruitment was prevalent even before the outbreak of the current war. Local leaders played a significant role in recruiting children in exchange for protection for their communities or for money for personal or collective use. Peers, driven by economic necessity and aspirations for a brighter future, also encouraged some adolescents.

Testimonies reveal that the Sudanese army recruited children as part of popular mobilisation operations overseen by members of the Islamic Movement. The army documented cases of recruiting children in Nyala before the RSF took control of the city. Children captured by RSF soldiers in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, indicate that they were recruited as spies before the RSF took full control of the city in October 2023. The International Committee of the Red Cross later freed these children.