Case Against Labour Rights Defender Draws International Outcry – Nearly 100 International Rights Groups Demand Industry Action

Today (8 August), nearly 100 international and national labor and human rights groups and NGOs sent a joint-letter to members of the Thai Pineapple Industry Association (TPIA), calling on them to to urge TPIA member Natural Fruit to drop the criminal and civil charges it leveled against researcher and labor rights activist Andy Hall. Signatories to the letter include representatives of more than 20 countries, as well as global organizations including the International Trade Union Confederation, European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) and Human Rights Watch […]

Children for Hire: A Portrait of Child Labor in Mon Areas

The growing domestic and international attention being paid to child labor in Burma, also known as Myanmar, signals a vital step in the country’s reform and development process. The advent of new funding to research the scope of the problem, proposed amendments to labor laws, and popularized documentaries exposing the lives of working children have indicated fresh interest in revealing and reducing the incidence of child labor.

However, the catalyst for this report was sparked by observations that these proliferating activities and discussions are often largely restricted to urban areas, particularly regarding the well-known prevalence of Burma’s “teashop boys.” While urban forms of child labor warrant immediate and effective interventions, the ambiguity that shrouds less visible forms of the practice, especially occurring in rural ethnic villages and communities tucked against the country’s vast borderline, necessitates targeted illumination. During several interviews conducted for this report, civil society members and child protection officers described child labor in Burma as vastly under-researched, and said that accurate data from the country’s peripheral areas is almost nonexistent […]

WCRP Releases “Children for Hire” to Mark Universal Children’s Day

The Woman and Child Rights Project (WCRP) has released its report, “Children for Hire: A portrait of child labor in Mon areas,” to illustrate the incidence of child labor in rural Mon communities and along Burma’s eastern border. Drawn from 67 interviews conducted with working children and their families, health workers, public sector and civil society members, and child protection officers, the report aims to elevate the voices of underage workers and expose the less visible forms of child labor that exist outside of urban settings […]

BURMA: Abused Child Worker Who Seeks Justice Suffers Further Abuse in Courtroom

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) recently brought you details of a case in which police conspired with the employer of a young girl who allegedly abused and murdered her to cover up the facts (AHRC-UAC-136-2012). In this Urgent Appeal […]

မစိုးရိမ္လာၿပီး ဝီရသူနားရြက္ကို တံေတြးစြတ္သြားသူ

A monk helping a 14-year-old girl in a legal case against her employer for torturing her, sent an appeal letter to the regional high court to reassess the unfair process and procedure of hearings […]

မဟာေအာင္ေျမၿမဳိ႕နယ္၊ တရားရုံးတြင္ ၁၃-၈-၂၀၁၂-ေန႔၌ကေလးလုပ္သား မတင္နီလာေအး၏ အမႈကို ေရွ႕ေနငွားခြင့္မရဘဲ ရုံးတင္ေသာေန႔တြင္ပင္ ဇြတ္တရြက္ အဓမၼ တစ္ဖက္သက္ စစ္ေဆးခဲ့ျခင္းကို၊ ဥပေဒနဲ႔ အညီတရားမွ်တမႈ၊ မွန္ကန္မႈ ရွိေစရန္အတြက္ ျပန္လည္စစ္ေဆးေပးရန္ ေမတၱာရပ္ခံျခင္း […]

Support for Rights of the Child and Human Rights in Myanmar

Foreign Minister Bob Carr today announced a new $3 million package of Australian assistance for human rights initiatives in Myanmar. Senator Carr said the package would assist the Government of Myanmar to meet human rights commitments […]

Coercion, Cruelty and Collateral Damage

An assessment of grave violations of children’s rights in conflict zones of southern Burma  

This report is titled “Coercion, Cruelty and Collateral Damage: An assessment of grave violations of children’s rights in conflict zones of southern Burma”, and it is released by the Woman and Child Rights Project (WCRP), which was founded in 2000 by members of the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) to monitor and protect the rights of women and children in southern Burma. The 24-page report reveals that grave violations of children’s rights such as recruitment of child soldiers, killing and maiming, rape and sexual abuse, and forced labor continue to be committed by the Burmese military, despite the creation, by the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1612 on Children and Armed Conflict passed in 2005 […]

New Report Highlights Government’s Failure to Protect Children in Southern Burma

Children in southern Burma continue to suffer from grave human rights violations at the hands of Burma Army soldiers, reveals a new report from the Woman and Child Rights Project (WCRP) released today. The report provides data from cases over the last 6 years, illustrating that the Burmese government has failed to live up to its international obligations to protect children in situations of armed conflict […]

No More Denial: Children Affected by Armed Conflict in Myanmar (Burma)

This report of Watchlist focuses on the impact of armed conflict on children and violations against children on armed conflicts in Burma. Information presented in the report is based on secondary sources available in the public and […]

Forgotten Future: Children Affected by Armed Conflict in Burma

“The top generals in the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) insist that Burma is a safe place for children, where all young people are “regarded as precious gems.” But many children in Burma, particularly those affected by armed conflict, do not have access to education, healthcare, or other child protection services. They are exploited for their […]