Child soldiers are alarmingly common in
Burma. But a number of international programs are finding creative ways to
dismantle the practice.
A bag of rice and $60 in local
currency: that is what it cost one unscrupulous military officer to entice Mg
Tun Tun, a fifteen year-old boy from the rural Bago region of Burma, to join
the army. According to an interview with the child’s mother in a local
newspaper, Mg Tun Tun was cutting wood near his home when he was run down by a
motorcycle and spirited away to a nearby military base. He was released in
September along with 41 other fresh-faced boys of about the same age, at a
ceremony presided over by officials from the Tatmadaw, as the Burmese military
is known. Mg Tun Tun was bribed, but some of the other children said they had
joined willingly and would even re-enlist after turning 18.
The causes and extent of the
phenomenon of child combatants in Burma is a complex issue. While there are no
exact figures – many question whether the Burmese military even knows how many
adult soldiers it has, let alone minors – the research and advocacy group Human
Rights Watch estimated in 2002 that the country had the highest number of child
soldiers in the world. Recruitment occurs despite an official policy,
introduced in 1974, that the Tatmadaw will neither seek nor accept children
under eighteen into its ranks.
Yet the army continues to put
pressure on officers to maintain numbers, and sometimes requires soldiers who
want to retire to find a replacement. Unaccompanied children can be enlisted by
brokers who are paid a “finder’s fee.” Parents who feel their children need to
learn some “discipline” are known to enroll them with a wink and a nod to a
recruiter. While there are reports of abductions, anecdotal evidence suggests
it is more common for children to join the Tatmadaw for economic reasons,
either voluntarily or at the behest of their parents.
“We know it’s still a problem,
both the recruitment and use of child soldiers,” says Matthew Smith, the Burma
researcher for Human Rights Watch. Referring to an insurgency near the Chinese
border that broke out in June 2011, he continued: “We [have] documented a
number of child soldiers on the front lines of the Kachin conflict in the past
year alone.”
***
The Shangri-La Traders Hotel in
downtown Yangon, where businessmen in suits hold quiet meetings in a plush,
teal-carpeted lobby, is the last place you'd expect to be the frontline in the
fight against the exploitation of child soldiers. But in a small office on the
12th floor, that is precisely what the International Labor Organization (ILO)
has been doing for the last five years. “These 12 letters – all dated August
30, all the same day – all releases of kids through [our] complaints
mechanism,” ILO liaison officer Steve Marshall said proudly, as he leafed
through papers during a recent interview. Appointed to the post in July 2007,
Mr. Marshall is a straight-talking New Zealander who joined the ILO a decade
ago after working in the private sector. Under his stewardship, the small ILO
mission – it got its second expatriate staff member in 2007 – has become one of
the most effective U.N. agencies in Burma.
In February 2007, the ILO began
implementing a bilateral agreement with the Burmese government known as a
"Supplementary Understanding": a mechanism that allows Burmese
citizens to file formal complaints about incidents of forced labor, including
underage recruitment. In the first year, only 42 complaints were received,
about ten of which were for child combatants. In some cases, complainants were
harassed, arrested and even jailed.
Today, by contrast, the ILO
receives an average of 60 complaints a month, about half of which concern child
soldiers. Since 2007, around 520 child combatants have been released from the
Burmese military, according to UNICEF – many as a result of complaints filed to
the ILO. The Tatmadaw [Burmese military] is “committed to do our best for the
children of Myanmar,” said a Burmese colonel during a rare public statement in
August.
In the past 18 months, the
Tatmadaw has also agreed to pardon and discharge child soldiers convicted of
deserting. While the ILO maintains that it is “a legal mockery to have somebody
who was illegally recruited charged with a crime for leaving that illegal
recruitment”, it has also played on the generals’ pride to encourage the policy
change. As a military officer, said Mr. Marshall, if you send a child deserter
back “up to the frontline, are you confident that that person will be a good
soldier? And the answer is pretty clear: no…. [Underage recruitment] is not
something that a professional army wants to be seen as condoning in any way.”
Punishments for Tatmadaw officers
who permit minors to enlist has also reduced the incidence of the problem, Mr
Marshall noted, as he flicked through sheets of paper containing the details of
confirmed cases. “This one, he was demoted from staff sergeant to sergeant.
This one, he was demoted from lance corporal to private.” The Tatmadaw has
issued cash fines and reprimands too, says Mr Marshall, as well as reducing the
length of service for the purposes of promotion and pensions. “And we’ve had
now a number of instances where the perpetrators were imprisoned. That sort of
accountability is working very well to change the behavioral patterns on the
ground and it shows the commitment of the senior Tatmadaw officials to make
this work.”
***
The push to end underage
recruitment has taken a new direction under the reformist government of Burma’s
President Thein Sein, who came to power in 2011 in a carefully choreographed
transition following decades of military rule. In March, his government reached
a separate agreement with the ILO to end forced labor, including underage
recruitment, by 2015. The pact approved steps to identify child soldiers in
prison and to inspect certain constitutionally-authorized local militias.
Then in June, Burma’s Ministry of
Defense signed an 18-month ‘joint action plan’ with a multi-agency
international task force spearheaded by the U.N. For armed forces like the
Tatmadaw that make it onto the U.N. Secretary General’s so-called ‘list of
shame’ – groups that recruit or use children – the signing of an action plan is
a requirement for delisting.
“The negotiations sped up after
the new government came to power, to the point where they were calling us to
arrange our monthly meetings,” says Ramesh Shrestha, the head of the U.N.
Children’s Fund (U.N.ICEF) in Burma, which leads the task force. “The
government wants to clean up its image. It wants to be treated normally and
wants to be recognized internationally. Issues like [underage recruitment] are
very visible. It will also be chair of [the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations] in 2014 and knows this issue can’t be going on in the background at
the same time.”
The action plan will see the task
force’s members work directly with the Tatmadaw to identify underage recruits.
When one is found, he will be discharged and spend a few weeks in an interim
facility, where children can receive post-discharge counseling. Interviews will
also be conducted to understand the child’s experiences and identify
accountability issues. The child will then be sent home but will enter a
rehabilitation program, where he will receive vocational support. As with the
ILO’s Supplementary Understanding process, soldiers over 18 who are found to
have been recruited underage will be able to choose between discharging or
continuing their military career. The task force will also work to strengthen
the adult recruiting process, too, and raise awareness about child combatants
in both the military and wider community. “If all goes well I think in the next
six months the majority of underage recruits will be discharged,” Mr Shrestha
says. “And I’m hopeful that by the end of the 18 month action plan most
underage recruitment will have stopped.”
However, Mr Shrestha concedes
that not everyone – even within the task force – is convinced of the
government’s sincerity or its ability to tackle underage recruitment.
“Some [within the task force]
feel it will be easy for the Tatmadaw to manipulate us,” Mr Shrestha admits.
“They doubt both the military’s intent and ability to stop recruitment because
of what they say are high rates of desertion.” When negotiating the joint
action plan, the Tatmadaw and the task force struggled to agree on a provision
that allows the task force’s members to inspect the military’s four main
recruitment centers, where all new soldiers are sent for training. Spot checks
were off limits: the Tatmadaw eventually agreed to allow visits with 72 hour
notice, making the point that “no army in the world would allow surprise
checks”, Mr Shrestha says.
***
Moreover, neither the ILO
Supplementary Understanding process, nor the activities of the U.N. task force,
cover child combatants in 11 of Burma’s non-state armies, seven of which are on
the Secretary General’s "list of shame." The U.N. joint action plan
covers only the Tatmadaw and Border Guard Force militias, groups that were
formerly in armed opposition to the government but agreed to operate within the
state in 2009. For the outstanding non-state armies, the ILO forwards
complaints about underage recruitment directly to groups concerned, but it is
normally impossible to verify whether any action is taken.
Mr. Smith of Human Rights Watch
says that boys from these ethnic insurgency groups often enlist because of
“fierce grievances” against the Tatmadaw, a result of decades-long conflicts
with the official forces of the state. “I interviewed a 14-year-old Kachin
child soldier who witnessed the Tatmadaw execute his father. He wants nothing
other than to be a KIA soldier,” Mr. Smith said.
Yet there are promising signs
that non-state armies may soon be brought under the umbrella of the U.N. programs. Recently, the Karenni National
Progressive Party and the New Mon State Party, two other militant minority
groups, signed a "deed of commitment" with Geneva Call, an
international NGO, pledging to stop the use of child combatants and to protect
children in conflict zones. “Our policy is to respect international
humanitarian law in a military operation,” New Mon State Party spokesman Hong
Sa told a U.N. news agency. “We fully welcome international monitoring.”
Mr. Marshall said such agreements
with separatists are a step in the right direction: towards a U.N. monitoring
process. “There is an expectation that we will negotiate, with each of them, a
similar joint action plan. … [Until recently] we have not been in a position to
negotiate because of the difficulties in respect to access, verification,
rehabilitation and issues of that nature. But the environment is now changing
and that has become very much more feasible.”
One of the biggest questions
hanging over Thein Sein’s government is its ability to broker peace with armed
opposition groups. The fate of the long-running conflicts will define many
issues central to the country’s future – not least the use and recruitment of
child soldiers. But the progress made to date – with only one group, the
Kachin, yet to agree a ceasefire – offers grounds for optimism that there will
be fewer stories like Mg Tun Tun’s emerging from Burma in the years to come.
Kyaw Kyaw
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