Committee on Prevention of Recruitment of Child Soldiers holds 1/2022 meeting

Union Minister for Defence General Mya Tun Oo, Chairman of Committee on the Prevention of Recruitment of Child Soldiers, presided over the (1/2022) committee meeting yesterday.
During the meeting, the Union Minister said the government and the Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting (CTFMR) signed the prevention of child soldier recruitment project on 27 June 2012 and the term of the project was 18 months. Although the Plan of Action period was over on 27 December 2013, it was extended further six months two times due to the uncompleted procedures.
After the end of the second six-month term on 27 December 2014, the Plan of Action was not extended but carried out with Indicator 21 and then it was reduced to Indicator 11 according to the meeting of CTFMR and the government conducted on 26 July 2018. According to the Plan of Action, the Tatmadaw discharged 1,029 child soldiers, who were wrongly recruited, cooperating with CTFMR from June 2012 until today.
He also added that the arrangements are being made to release wrongly recruited 28 child soldiers to reunite with their parents and the senior officers and military members were taking action for wrongly selecting the underage children.
For such cooperation between Tatmadaw and CTFMR, Tatmadaw was removed from the lists of the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the annual lists of UN Secretary-General for 2019 on 15 June 2020 and reached under the monitor for one year.
During that period, the Tatmadaw strictly followed the law, rules and regulations in recruiting the new members.
Despite such doings, Tatmadaw was put back on the list again one-sidedly before the issuance of the annual report of the UN Secretary-General on 21 June 2021. But, Tatmadaw organized the committee meeting as usual and reported the outcomes of the meeting to CTFMR via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services also gave instructions to conduct the measures systematically and report to CTFMR.
Moreover, the government also informed the CTFMR to cooperate using various ways and the activities of Tatmadaw were also presented to Ms Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Tatmadaw will carry out the procedures according to its commitments.
Then, the attendees coordinated the discussion and the Committee Chairman concluded the meeting. — MNA