_ By Dr San Oo Aung

According to Amnesty International, 300,000 children under the age of eighteen are currently participating in armed conflicts in more than thirty different countries on nearly every continent.

Myanmar is unique in the region, as the only country where government armed forces forcibly recruit and use children between the ages of 12 and 18. ( Amnesty International)

While most child soldiers are in their teens, some are as young as seven years old. Children have been used as spies, as spotters, observers, message-carriers, and even as human shields, servants or to lay or clear landmines.

1. Children are uniquely vulnerable to military recruitment because of their emotional and physical immaturity. They are easily manipulated and can be drawn into violence that they are too young to resist or understand.
2. Technological advances in weaponry and the proliferation of small arms have contributed to the increased use of child soldiers. Lightweight automatic weapons are simple to operate, often easily accessible, and can be used by children as easily as adults.
3. Children are most likely to become child soldiers if _
   1. they are poor,
   2. separated from their families,
   3. displaced from their homes,
   4. living in a combat zone or
   5. have limited access to education.
   6. Orphans and
   7. refugees are particularly vulnerable to recruitment.
   8. Many children join armed groups because of_
   9. economic or
   10. social pressure, or because
   11. children believe that the group will offer food or security.
   12. Others are forcibly recruited, “press-ganged” or
   13. abducted by armed groups.

“Burma’s army preys on children; using threats, intimidation and often violence to force young boys to become soldiers. To be a boy in Burma today means facing the constant risk of being picked up off the street, forced to commit atrocities against villagers, and never seeing your family again,”….. Jo Becker Advocacy Director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

“Burma has the largest number of child soldiers in the world and the number is growing”, Human Rights Watch said, “The overwhelming majority of Burma’s child soldiers are found in the national army, which forcibly recruits children as young as 11, although armed opposition groups use child soldiers as well.” (http://www.humanrightswatch.org/press/2002/10/burma-1016.htm)

Throughout Burma (Myanmar), children as young as eleven are being forcibly recruited into Myanma Tatmadaw. Whether with or without their parents’ knowledge or consent, they are sent to military training camps where they are routinely beaten, and brutally punished if they try to escape. (http://www.humanrightswatch.org/campaigns/crp/burma/index.htm)

“Burma has a poor human rights record, but its record on child soldiers is the worst in the world,” said Jo Becker, advocacy director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

According to the accounts of former soldiers interviewed by Human Rights Watch, 20 percent or more of Myanmar Tatmadaw’s 400,000 active duty soldiers may be children under the age of 18. There may be as many as 70,000 soldiers under the age of 18 in Myanmar Amy.

The 220-page report, “My Gun was as Tall as Me: Child Soldiers in Burma,” is the most comprehensive study of child soldiers in Burma. Drawing on interviews with more than three dozen current and former child soldiers.

Recruiters for Burma’s army frequently apprehend boys at train and bus stations, markets and other public places, threatening them with jail if they refuse to join the army. The boys are given no opportunity to contact their families, and are sent to camps where they undergo weapons training, are routinely beaten, and brutally punished if they try to escape. Human Rights Watch received several accounts of boys who were beaten to death after trying to run away.

Once deployed, boys as young as 12 engage in combat against opposition groups, and are forced to commit human rights abuses against civilians, including rounding up villagers for forced labor, burning villages, and carrying out executions. Human Rights Watch interviewed two boys, ages 13 and 15 at the time, who belonged to units that massacred a group of 15 women and children in Shan State in early 2001.

To counter their reluctance, the children are dulled by forcing them to commit brutalities and to take drugs like marijuana, amphetamines and “brown-brown” that inhibit guilt and fear. Propaganda, revenge and fear of being left alone influence children to “voluntarily” stay in the army. Children have been both participants in and victims of atrocities.

Often recruited or abducted to join armies, many of these children - some younger than 10 years old - have witnessed or taken part in acts of unbelievable violence, often against their own families or communities. Such children are exposed to the worst dangers and the most horrible suffering, both psychological and physical. What is more, they are easily manipulated and encouraged to commit grievous acts, which they are often unable to comprehend.

Children who are used as soldiers are robbed of their childhood and are often subjected to extreme brutality. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers.

1. Many are abducted or
2. recruited by force,
3. and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death.
4. Others join armed groups out of desperation.
5. As society breaks down during conflict,
6. leaving children no access to school,
7. driving them from their homes,
8. or separating them from family members,
9. many children perceive armed groups as their best chance for survival.
10. Others seek escape from poverty
11. or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed.

The government of Burma continues to recruit large numbers of children into its army, many by force, despite its promises to stop this internationally-condemned practice, says a new report issued by Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB). HREIB researchers conducted extensive interviews with more than 50 child recruits who fled to the Thai border for its report, “Despite Promises: Child Soldiers in Burma’s Armed Forces.” Most of the children said they were coerced and deceived to join the army and suffer its horrible conditions in training camps and dangers of injury and death on the battlefield fighting insurgents. Other children said they joined the military because of economic hardships and social pressures, conditions that make children in Burma easy targets for government recruiters. The HREIB interviews show that child recruitment continues at an alarming rate even after the government, under international pressure, created a high-level committee that promised to handle the problem.

The “Committee for Prevention of Military Recruitment of Under-age Children” was formed in January 2004 after the U.N. Secretary-General reported to the U.N. Security Council that Burma was violating international laws prohibiting the recruitment and use of children as soldiers. “This committee has done little to protect children from being recruited into the military,” says Aung Myo Min, the director of HREIB and the lead author of the new report. “Neither does the committee take any serious action on complaints from family members of children currently serving in the armed forces.”

“By continuing to use and recruit children into the army and by failing to demobilize child combatants, the SPDC is in violation of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child,” he says.

HREIB calls on the SPDC government to immediately carry out its stated policy of prohibiting the recruitment of children and to punish those who violate this policy. The SPDC government must play a central role in disarming, demobilizing, and rehabilitating former child soldiers and should invite assistance from international humanitarian organizations for the effort.

In 2002 the SPDC claimed that the army was comprised entirely of volunteers aged eighteen and older. In May 2002, the Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar to the UN stated that: “the Government prohibits the enlisting of recruits under the lawful age [of 18 years]. The under age are not allowed to apply for recruitment. Action is taken on any infringement of the Regulation under the Defence Services Act.”

In January 2003 The Washington Post conducted an investigation along the Thai-Burma border and interviewed several former soldiers recruited as children. Reports emerged of children being kidnapped by soldiers while on their way home from school, at ports, bus terminals, and train stations. In June 2003, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) reported recruitment of children as young as eleven or twelve, based on eyewitness accounts by refugees in Northern Thailand.

The Human Rights Watch in 2002. reported that the new recruits were typically sent to one of two large recruitment holding centres near Yangon and Mandalay. Reports by former soldiers sent to the centres over the past four years indicated that approximately 35 to 45 per cent of new recruits were under the age of eighteen and 15 to 20 per cent were under the age of fifteen. The youngest recruits were between eleven and thirteen.

Demobilization and child protection programs

There were no disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs available for child soldiers in Myanmar or neighbouring countries.

Children suspected of desertion were

1. subjected to beatings,
2. long prison terms,
3. forced re-recruitment, or in some cases,
4. summary
5. execution.

Recommendations

1. The UN Security Council should treat the continued recruitment and use of child soldiers in Myanmar as a matter of high priority; and should consider taking appropriate steps to ensure that such recruitment and use is halted.
2. The Myanmar government should take immediate steps to end the forced and voluntary recruitment of children into the armed forces.
3. The government should permit either UN observers, or independent human rights monitors to visit Myanmar and observe recruitment practices within the armed forces.
4. The government should begin a dialogue with UNICEF and other appropriate UN agencies to establish DDR programs for child soldiers from both government and opposition forces.
5. DDR programs should take into account the specific needs of girls, former child soldiers who have attained the age of majority, and other vulnerable youth.
6. The government should ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on children in armed conflict and declare a commitment to a “straight-18” standard for recruitment.
7. In cooperation with the ICRC, UNICEF, and nongovernmental organizations, conduct trainings in international humanitarian law and the rights of children for all soldiers, including officers and recruiters.
8. Educational programs and vocational training, and encourage children and their families to utilize such opportunities. Nongovernmental Organizations must support vocational and educational programs, particularly along border areas, including accelerated educational programs for displaced children, child soldiers, and others who missed out on a primary education or whose education has been interrupted.
9. Provide counseling and other assistance to help rehabilitate and reintegrate former child soldiers.
10. Encourage opposition groups and the SPDC not to recruit children under the age of eighteen.
11. Need to debrief them, as they are usually brain washed to regard all non-burman ethnics as enemies.
12. We all need to regard any child soldier running away from border posts into neighbouring countries as refugees, not as deserters. International community, NGOs and UNSG must pressure or order the UNHCR to accept this basic concept.
13. UNHCR must provide a safe heaven for them.
14. UNHCR must work with WHO, UNICEF and NGOs to rehabilitate and resettle them.
15. UNHCR must work with WHO, UNICEF and NGOs to re-educate them.
16. As the SPDC had ignored the dozens of UNGA resolutions and Human Rights reports of various authorities, UNSC must vote to pressure SPDC to stop using child soldiers.

I hereby strongly suggest to make March 27 as Burma’s Child Soldiers Day and continue to highlight and campaign for the Myanmar Child Soldiers’ plight and the need to help them.