The child soldiers of Myanmar

The use of children in combat roles is not new in Myanmar. Both the government and some resistance groups have child soldiers, with tragic results. Hundreds of children have been killed and tortured by the Myanmar army in recent years. In this episode of Human Rights Magazine, Yiwen Li speaks with several experts about the issue.

Human Rights Magazine is produced by The Upstream Journal magazine. The host, Derek MacCuish, is editor of both. If you agree that informed reporting on human rights and social justice issues is important, your support would be welcome. Please rate the podcast wherever you listen to it, and tell your friends about episodes that you find interesting. Why not consider making a financial contribution to help us cover costs?  You are always welcome to email with your comments.

Transcript

Yiwen Li:

The recruitment and use of child soldiers has been a persisting problem in Myanmar where children are often coerced, intimidated, and deceived into joining armies. 

The atrocities against children are done by both Tatmadaw, which is the Burmese national army, and ethnic resistance groups.

In 2002, Myanmar was listed as the country with the highest number of child soldiers by Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization that focuses on human rights advocacy and research. Underaged children accounted for 20% or higher of the serving soldiers that year, according to the testimonies given by ex-soldiers. 

Children undergo severe human rights abuse both in military training camps and in war, such as isolation and deprivation from basic nourishment, and they are forced to conduct or witness cruel acts against civilians, causing deep-rooted psychological damage. 

From 2011 to 2021, under a civilian government, the situation slightly improved and there were observable patterns of cooperation between the United Nations and the Myanmar government.

In June 2012, the Myanmar government signed the Joint Action Plan with the United Nations, which aims to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children by the Tatmadaw. A more strict and regulated age assessment procedure was established, and responsible military directives were implemented. Eventually, 956 children were released and reintegrated.

However, there were concerns regarding the large gaps between the government's promises and the actual efficacy. After the takeover of a military coup in 2021, the situation worsened as armed conflicts escalated, and the effectiveness of these agreements became questionable. Human Rights Watch contended that after the signature of the Joint Action Plan, the Myanmar government failed to address the fundamental issue, which is the system of incentives behind unlawful recruitment and the lack of accountability among the military. The UN access to the armed forces for verification purposes was denied as well, and authorities sought to exempt and justify the recruitment of 16-year-olds who had completed 10 years of education. 

Furthermore, there are great complexity and interlinkages between the causes of the widespread recruitment of child soldiers in Myanmar. 

I spoke with Dr. Alexandre Pelletier, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Laval University, who specializes in Southeast Asian politics. He also serves as the co-director of the Human Rights Observatory. He highlighted a few fundamental causes behind this ingrained issue.

So, maybe one of the reasons is that the Tatmadaw - Myanmar armed forces - are extremely decentralized, in a sense, especially after the 1990s. Local commanders have lots of leeway when it comes to the way the fund their activities, and the way they operate and interact with villagers and population. And lack of funding, lack of resources, as meant that local commanders have used any forms of strategies to generate revenues and generate recruits to join the armed force. So that's one reason the armed forces are quite decentralized. And when we see decentralized armed forces, most of the time it leads to abuses of civilians. Decentralized armed forces are also known to lead to more sexual crimes. And the recruitment of children, or abuse of children. So some lower ranking officers are responsible for that practice of recruiting children. So these centralized or fragmented armed forces can be one form of explanation. 

Of course, poverty, displacement is another very important explanation. Children have been unrooted by war, some of them are located in refugee camps, IDP camps, so and the vulnerability of children in IDP camps means that there's no parents sometimes. So armed groups can go and just recruit children and offer the possibility of the hope of rewards, or the hope of living a better life than the refugee camps can offer. So, so in refugee or IDP camps, you will see both the Tatmadaw, but also ethnic armed organizations also recruit there. So that's one reason displacement, it helps explain the recruitment of children. 

Poverty and lack of education, lack of other opportunities really, can be also one explanation. Another one, of course, it's the lack of manpower, the lack of soldiers, because once you start recruiting among children, I mean, this is probably not the first choice when you're a military. Probably not the first choice to recruit children, because they're not very strong, not trained. But sometimes you have no other choices. So inadequate manpower can be also one explanation, especially for Tatmadaw, which is not very popular among the population. So it's extremely difficult to recruit voluntarily. So there's not many people that will join the Tatmadaw voluntarily. And also they face active armed opposition. So they need to have increased their ranks. So for example, in 1990s, I think that Tatmadaw went from 200,000 soldiers to about 400,000. So you don't create soldiers there very easily. So you need to recruit, and sometimes coerce people into the armed forces. So the lack of manpower, that's something we don't see as much in in ethnic armed organizations, because, of course, they tend to be far more popular among the population, because their resistance forces, because they defend their nation, their ethnic group, so we don't see that as much. But that's sometimes that's sometimes also the case. Three years and years of war, sometimes you just, you just don't have as many soldiers or prospect soldiers as you used to have. So and also, I mean, lack of legal enforcement in Myanmar that’s not a state that enforces human rights in any way. And neither does it have the capacity to do so. Especially as soon as it's outside the zone that the Myanmar government controls better.

One of the general strategies of illegal recruitment is by approaching unemployed and alone adolescents in public places and then asking for identification documents, knowing that most adolescents do not carry them. Another common strategy is to tell the children that there are potential job opportunities and deceive the children into military training camps. 

It is noteworthy that the issue of recruitment of child soldiers intertwines with some other violations and human rights abuse. Ariane Lignier, Communications Officer for the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict mentioned the linkages between the recruitment and use of children and other grave violations, especially human trafficking.

The office of the Special Representative of children in armed conflict conducted a study to analyze what were the gaps of the mandate for the 25th anniversary of the mandate. And as per the study, few elements came out, and one was trafficking. So Mrs. Gamba, the Special Representative is now working closely with the Special Rapporteur on trafficking. We're currently working on a study that's being released at the end of the year, that's going to be released at the end of the year, about the interlinkages between trafficking and the six grave violations. And so we can see clear links already. And so very often, children in the move particular, extremely vulnerable and extremely at risk of being trafficked. They can be trafficked to join certain armed groups to join to join certain armed forces. They can be abducted for other reasons, such as sexual violence as well. So there is a clear link between trafficking and the six grave violations. We don't have yet clear figures about how many children are being trafficked to join armed forces and armed groups. But the link between the two is clear. And I think that's very much the case when you have as mentioned movements of population, which is the case in Myanmar where we have a lot of internal displaced person. So that's also a big risk.

Solving the problem of recruiting child soldiers in Myanmar requires a multifaceted approach that addresses both the root causes and the immediate challenges.

Dr. Pelletier: I mean, one way to tackle that is to break down this structure of incentive. Right. But there's very little areas where we can do anything at this stage. Right. There's recruitment quotas that are have been put into place and also by the military. So that's, that's difficult. And there's pure abduction, sometimes they will just go and take the kids are threatened with arrest if they don't come. So that's, that's pure. I mean, that's there's that's the that's a very illegal violent way of recruiting children.

So sometimes it's, it almost appears as more rational for children to join, rather than stand on the on the sideline. So that's a lot more difficult to tackle as a phenomenon. So that means increasing opportunities and resources and education and in revenue for children so that they don't see this as a as the only options they have. But that's also that at this stage of the conflict, it's pretty difficult to implement. And what we saw during the last decade is that they were they were improvements on this, and the increase in revenue and Human Development Index did make a difference for the availability of children as recruits for armed groups. And sometimes, also, I mean, recruitment of children is based on children voluntarily joining armed groups to avenge parents that were killed by the military to advantage their village being destroyed. Well, that that is difficult also to curb as a phenomenon because, of course, wars create all forms of, of desire for revenge, and so that that's a lot more difficult to tackle as a phenomenon. So techniques of recruitment, ranging from coercion and abduction, which is clearly legal, that's violent means to much more complex sources of recruitment. While it requires certainly a multiplicity of means to tackle that. And, of course, what we saw during the last decade of reforms, is that once kind of the environment was conducive to that kind of reform.

Meanwhile, the UN organizations have been actively engaged in addressing the harrowing issue of child soldier recruitment in Myanmar through multifaceted initiatives and collaborative efforts.

We had regular contact, and we were able to engage with the Myanmar armed forces. They had the conditionality within the action plan as well to really push them not to, not to recruit and use children anymore. Of course, since 2012, the context has evolved and has changed massively. And so we are now trying to keep the contact and to feel engaged with the Myanmar armed forces. We try to exchange letters and really engage as much as we can she was planning on traveling to Myanmar, but unfortunately, has not been able to do so as of yet. So we are really trying to continue the engagement because we started to really believes in the in the engagement with parties to conflict. And so we're just going to continue because, you know, we believe that this is extremely important. And that's part of our responsibility. As co-signatories of the of the joint action plan. And, of course, our colleagues on the ground are still in touch on a regular basis to try to push and to follow up on the implementation of the Joint Action Plan.

I mean, for us, we are trying to work closely with the regional organization. And so of course, something about the ASEAN so we're trying also to work closely with the ASEAN and all all the ASEAN members, and collaborate on possibilities to help provide solutions in supporting children affected by conflict. So for us, it's very important to continue the discussion. Our office has a responsibility to provide information and to provide verified information. And for us, it's important that this information is being used, and it's being used by Member States, for their own advocacy for their own political engagement. And so we are really standing ready to collaborate and provide as much information to support this advocacy in order to find a solution. And our office reports on Myanmar. So we are also having and working closely with the UN Security Council Working Group on children and armed conflict. So we are the only mandate that has a working group in the UN Security Council. So that's an opportunity for us as well. To report on the situation in Myanmar through the country report that we are publishing every two years. And following the publication of the country reports they are recommendations. And usually there are conclusions as well. The conclusions on Myanmar have not yet been adopted. And so we're still engaging with member states for them to really take on board the conclusions and or take on board the recommendations and other conclusions but we do have also a space where we can engage directly with member states on this specific country. 

In conclusion, the issue of recruitment and utilization of child soldiers in Myanmar remains a deeply concerning and urgent human rights challenge. Addressing this issue demands not only immediate action to rescue and rehabilitate affected children but also a long-term commitment to address the root causes such as civil war, poverty, and lack of education. The global community must continue to apply diplomatic pressure, advocate for policy changes, and provide support to effectively end the egregious practice of recruiting child soldiers in Myanmar, safeguarding the rights and futures of its youth.