Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, Concludes Her First Visit to Myanmar

The United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, concluded a five-day visit to Myanmar today. Her first visit to the country, at the invitation of the Government, aimed to assess the impact of the conflict on children in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolution 1612, focusing in particular on the implementation of the Joint Action Plan (JAP) signed in 2012 by the Government and the Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting (CTFMR) to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children by the armed forces of Myanmar (Tatmadaw). The SRSG visited Nay Pyi Taw, Yangon, Mandalay and Myitkyina (Kachin state) […]

Myanmar: Further steps needed to end army’s recruitment and use of children

London, 23 January 2015 – The Myanmar government should promptly implement measures to honour its stated commitment towards ending child recruitment and use, Child Soldiers International said in a report released today. While some important steps have been taken since the government signed the June 2012 Joint Action Plan with the UN, research conducted by Child Soldiers International found that children below 18 years of age continue to be forcibly recruited and used in the Tatmadaw Kyi, the Myanmar army. The report calls on the government to urgently address serious gaps in age verification protocols, recruitment procedures and accountability mechanisms to ensure children are not recruited and used as soldiers in state forces […]

Under the radar: Ongoing recruitment and use of children by the Myanmar army

The Myanmar government should promptly implement measures to honour its stated commitment towards ending child recruitment and use, Child Soldiers International said in a report Under the radar: Ongoing recruitment and use of children by the Myanmar army. While some important steps have been taken since the government signed the June 2012 Joint Action Plan with the UN, research conducted by Child Soldiers International found that children below 18 years of age continue to be forcibly recruited and used in the Tatmadaw Kyi, the Myanmar army. The report calls on the government to urgently address serious gaps in age verification protocols, recruitment procedures and accountability mechanisms to ensure children are not recruited and used as soldiers in state forces […]

Burma Signing Sexual Violence Declaration Should not Just be PR Exercise

Burma Campaign UK today called on the government of Burma to immediately publish what concrete actions it will take, within a specific timeframe, to actually implement the ‘Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict’, which it has finally signed […]

Statement on Child Soldier

ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရႏွင္႔ အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာအလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ႔(ILO)တို႕ၾကား ခ်ဳပ္ဆိုထားသည္႔ နားလည္မႈစာခၽြန္လႊာအရ ကေလးစစ္သားအျဖစ္ စုေဆာင္းခံထားရသည္႔ သူမ်ားအားစီစစ္၍ ျပန္လည္တပ္ထြက္ခြင္႔ျပဳထားပါသည္။ ဤသို႔ စီစစ္အတည္ျပဳေဆာင္ရြက္ေန စဥ္ကာလအတြင္း ကာယကံရွင္ႏွင္႔ မိသားစုမ်ားအားလည္းေကာင္း၊ကူညီေဆာင္ရြက္ေပး သည္႔လူပုဂၢိဳလ္ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားအားလည္းေကာင္း […]

Myanmar: Act Now to Prevent Recruitment of Child Soldiers, Following New SC Recommendations

The Myanmar government must act now to implement the recent recommendations issued by the UN Security Council Working Group on children and armed conflict (UNSCWG) to end the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, Child Soldiers International said today. On 16 August 2013, the UNSCWG released its conclusions on children and armed conflict in Myanmar, urging the Myanmar government to take specific measures to protect children from unlawful recruitment by the Myanmar military and armed groups, and thereby live up to its commitments to bring a definitive end to underage recruitment in the country […]

Burma/Myanmar: KNU/KNLA Commits to the Protection of Children and the Prohibition of Conflict-Related Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

After seven years of dialogue with Geneva Call on international humanitarian norms, a ground-breaking step has been taken by the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA). KNU/KNLA has signed Geneva Call’s Deed of Commitment for the Prohibition of Sexual violence in Situations of Armed Conflict and towards the Elimination of Gender Discrimination and the Deed of Commitment for the Protection of Children from the Effects of Armed Conflict […]

Statement on the Occasion of Signing the Geneva Call Deed of Commitment Protecting Children in Armed Conflict and the Deed of Commitment Prohibiting Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict and Gender Discrimination

We, the Karen National Union (KNU), are proud to sign the Deed of Commitment for the Protection of Children from the Effects of Armed Conflict and the Deed of Commitment for the Prohibition of Sexual Violence in Situations of Armed Conflict and Towards the Elimination of Gender Discrimination […]

Child Soldiers Still Systematically Used in Burma

Last 7 July, the Burma Army demobilized 42 child soldiers, bringing the total to 108 discharged in the past 12 months. Although it is unclear exactly how many remain in its ranks, some estimates put the figure at 5,000. Thus, 108 represents just a fraction of the child soldiers employed by the Burma Army to engage in fighting and provide support to the wars being waged in ethnic areas.

It has been over one year since the Burma government signed an action plan with the UN to end recruitment and use of children in the armed forces by December 2013. The results, as Joe Becker of Human Rights Watch points out, are pitiful, “One year into the Burma-UN action plan, the Burmese military has failed to meet even the basic indicators of progress.” A host of restrictions on access for the UN Task Force employed to implement this action plan have rendered that agreement almost worthless, as the army continues to use and recruit children for war. On four occasions, the UN Task Force was denied access to military sites believed to house child soldiers. Furthermore, the Burma Army refuses to grant access to the Border Guard Forces (BGF), an arm of the military that operates in many ethnic areas. There is no program within the BGF to identify and release child soldiers, nor to end recruitment. The BGF is under the direct command of the Burma Army and any measures towards solving this issue must include these forces […]

British Parliamentarians Call on Government to Prioritise Human Rights During Burmese President Thein Sein Visit

British Parliamentarians from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma are calling on Foreign Secretary William Hague to prioritise human rights when he meets Burmese President Thein Sein in London.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group For Democracy in Burma has recently heard evidence on a number of serious human rights issues, including the continuing recruitment of child soldiers, ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, religious persecution against the Chin ethnic minority, and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Burmese Army against Kachin civilians […]