Do Not Use Children at Checkpoints
41
Signatures
500
Goal
April 12, 2026
We are in the midst of an all-out war, one that collapses, above all, onto the shoulders of the true and enduring owners of this land, the people, and especially children, the most powerless among them.
Despite all the political confrontations that the authors of this open letter have with the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at this moment, when the fate and future of the people are inextricably bound to the decisions of these same rulers, we set aside, for now, the anger and upheaval that define our relationship with the state. That reckoning can wait for another time, a time when the skies of our homeland, Iran, are no longer crowded with the assaults of foreign enemies. When they are gone, we will return to our real task, holding power accountable to the people of Iran.
But for now, we say this plainly, and not without a tightening fury: remove children from this battlefield masquerading as civic duty. We say it with a strained compassion, sharpened by a rising anger, and with genuine disbelief, how is it that the savagery of the United States and Israel is paraded through the spilled blood of children, while at the same time, you refuse to treat your own children as children?
How does one proclaim the sanctity of children’s blood, mourn their deaths louder than all others, and yet, when confronted with the abuse of children, respond with a smirk, placing them in dangerous arenas where minors have no place, and worse, according to eyewitness reports, putting weapons in their hands, stationing them in streets and checkpoints, tasking them with identifying threats and maintaining control?
What kind of conscience, what kind of moral imagination, can reconcile such a contradiction?
Even if one were to set aside, for a moment, the rights of the child, by what logic do you trust children and adolescents with emotional restraint, or with the ability to foresee the consequences of their own actions, or those of others? If these checkpoints are indeed meant to maintain order in a volatile situation, to manage conditions and detect potential infiltrators in time, and not simply to project power or stage a spectacle, how can such a serious responsibility be handed to minors, whose capacities are not even legally recognized in matters as basic as driving or financial management? And when, inevitably, something goes wrong, who will be held responsible for the consequences of placing underage individuals in such perilous and sensitive roles?
Therefore, we, the authors and signatories of this letter, with an anger we are forcing into restraint, choosing, for now, the language of counsel over confrontation, demand that you act swiftly and decisively, in accordance with the best interests of the child as outlined in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Islamic Republic of Iran is a signatory. Revise the so-called “Defenders of the Homeland for Iran” initiative, and cease the use of anyone under the age of 18 immediately.
Furthermore, from this moment forward, in every decision you make, place the rights of children and adolescents at the center, and refrain from any action that turns them into human shields. Do not allow the mistreatment and exploitation of Iran’s children and youth to become a pretext for foreign aggressors to justify discriminatory violence against them.
We must not grant that pretext ourselves. Treat our children as children, so that others will not dare to see them as anything else.
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Recent events
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See where all the votes are coming from
Province Number of signatures Alborz 0 Ardabil 0 Bushehr 0 Chahar Mahaal and Bakhtiari 0 East Azerbaijan 0 Fars 1 Gilan 0 Golestan 0 Hamadan 0 Hormozgan 0 Ilam 0 Isfahan 2 Kerman 0 Kermanshah 0 Khuzestan 0 Kohgiluyehv And Boyer Ahmad 0 Kurdistan 0 Lorestan 0 Markazi 0 Mazandaran 0 North Khorasan 0 Qazvin 0 Qom 0 Razavi Khorasan 0 Semnan 0 Sistan and Baluchestan 0 South Khorasan 1 Tehran 3 West Azerbaijan 0 Yazd 0 Zanjan 0 This petition has received 41 signatures so far. Approximately 67% of signatures come from Iran. Approximately 33% of signatures come from outside of Iran. Learn how Daadkhast generates signature maps. -
Latest signatures
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Signed via Telegram
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استفاده از کودکان برای وظایف انتظامی و امنیتی نقض آشکار حقوق کودکان است.
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Signed via Telegram
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Signed via Telegram
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A group of civil activists in Iran started this petition
با استفاده ابزاری از کودکان و دادن سلاح به دست آنها برای ایست بازرسی به شدت مخالف هستم.