ISIS defeat impossible without help for indoctrinated child soldiers, says Roméo Dallaire
The jihadist group ISIS have created a generation that's known nothing but the so-called caliphate by recruiting and indoctrinating children, as a means of securing the group's future.
The more we let all these conflicts fester with children, the longer they are going to be. They are going to be generational. They are going to be sustained and we will not stop it or win and will we certainly not prevent our security from being at risk.- Retired Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire
The children are known as"caliphate cubs." And they're used to fight and die in Syria.
Researchers at Georgia State University have found that ISIS is recruiting and sending children into battle at an unprecedented rate.
And researchers at the Quilliam Foundation, a thinktank that studies extremism, found that ISIS is aggressively building a new generation of fighters and indoctrinating them with an extremist-based curriculum from birth.
Both sets of findings raise critical concerns about a generation growing up knowing nothing but the world of the caliphate.
Guests in this segment:
- Nikita Malik, senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation and co-author of the report, The Children of the Islamic State.
- Roméo Dallaire, retired lieutenant-general and founder of The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, committed to ending the use of child soldiers.
This segment was produced by The Current's Catherine Kalbfleisch.