The recruitment and use of children by the military and other armed actors in Myanmar continues to occur despite the dramatic and welcome pace of other changes in the country over the past year. The Myanmar military and other armed groups have militarily recruited children in 2012.
The UN and other agencies have evidence that the Myanmar military routinely falsifies ages, and in some cases the identity, of recruits to hinder parents or guardians from locating them. Trickery and bribery, along with threats and force are widely used to recruit children into the Myanmar military. Most children are recruited by military personnel who pick up unaccompanied children and take them to recruitment centres, while in a few cases recruitment continues to be conducted by civilian brokers. Civilian or military brokers are paid around MMK30,000 ($35) and a bag of rice or a jerry can of kerosene for each recruit.
Most of the action taken has been disciplinary; criminal investigation and prosecutions of perpetrators are very exceptional, with only one civilian broker being referred to the criminal court. Limited measures such as these have clearly failed to act as a real deterrent to those pursuing underage recruitment. Indeed, Child Soldiers International has found that the consequences for failing to meet recruitment targets are usually more severe than the disciplinary penalties applied in instances of underage recruitment.
To translate the commitments into tangible progress, there needs to be effective implementation coupled with independent monitoring. To achieve this, the UN and other independent humanitarian actors need access to military sites and conflict areas to monitor, verify and release children recruited by the military and armed opposition groups in Myanmar.