In a sign of the continuing thaw in Myanmar politics and the growing weight of the international community in this once stubbornly closed country, the Myanmar Armed Forces—more commonly known as the Tatmadaw—released 42 underage soldiers.
The 42 children and young people were formally discharged to their families in the presence of officials from both the Myanmar government and the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office and UNICEF on the anniversary of the signing of Action Plan, a multi-faceted plan to demobilize all children in the Tatmadaw.
The discharges were carried out by the Myanmar government in fulfillment of UN Security Council Resolution 1612, adopted in 2005 to establish monitoring and reporting mechanisms on children’s rights violations. Myanmar, long an international pariah, has a well-documented record of children in combat, both in the government’s armed forces and in the handful of rebel groups fighting throughout the country.
Ashok Nigam, the UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar, portrayed the children’s release as one step in Myanmar’s larger efforts toward reform. “This discharge is the expression of a renewed commitment by the Government of Myanmar to ensuring UNSC 1612 is upheld as part of the current transition towards reform, good governance and inclusion. We expect the Tatmadaw will now be in a position to speed up the release of all children,” Nigam said.
The release was also a sign, however, of how much work remains in Myanmar’s much-heralded reforms. UNICEIF Representative in Myanmar, Bertrand Bainvel, stated that this release shows progress, and sends a positive signal to Myanmar and the international community, but there are some key issues that remain. The Myanmar Government has agreed to the Action plan. Even so, according to a report to the UNSC by UN Secretary-General, Myanmar children are still being recruited into the Tatmadaw. While recruiting is down, the Myanmar government is still listed by the UN as a party that recruits and uses children in combat. UNICEF Representative Bainvel claimed that is the issue is complicated, although it is now forbidden by Myanmar Law to recruit children into the Tatmadaw, but the implementation of this law is difficult to control.
There is very little Tatmadaw paperwork. Then, there is an issue of the birth document verification. There is no way to verify whether the document that claims that the child is of 18 years or older is a real, legitimate document. Furthermore, there is the wider issue of birth registration being very low. Thus, many children are born without any documents, and in those cases, verification becomes impossible.
UNICEF Representative Bainvel, further stressed that the Myanmar Government could demonstrate its commitment to ending the use of children and conflict once and for all by ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on involvement of children in armed conflicts; however, that action has yet to be taken.
With deadly and long-running conflicts between the Tatamdaw and numerous rebel groups raging throughout the country, however, it remains to be seen what effect, if any, the release of children by the Tatamdaw and continued international pressure will have on the rebel groups that recruit and use children—or how quickly and enthusiastically the Tatamdaw will put an end to child recruiting. Even the release of the 42 children and young people, a small but important symbol of progress and commitment, was carried out eight years after a UNSC Resolution and subsequent Action Plan for Myanmar pledged the government to stop child recruiting, discharge all child soldiers or soldiers recruited as children, and facilitate their immediate reintegration back to their families and communities. Therefore, little can be determined on the timeline of the Action Plan’s implementation. Furthermore, UNICEF Representative Bainvel emphasized the importance of extending the Action Plan timeline in order to provide enough time to the Tatmadaw to work towards its initiatives; according to Bainvel, extending the Action Plan’s timeline will send the signal that the Tatmadaw are committed to end the practice of children in the army once and for all.
In Myanmar, though, where memories of the worst abuses of the junta regime remain painfully fresh, it is steps like these—tentative, limited, and small—on which average citizens and international monitors alike are pinning their hopes for continued reform and progress.
