The Myanmar government signed an action plan on the prevention of recruitment of child soldiers with the Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting-CTFMR on 27 June 2012.
As the work process of the action did not complete, the action plan which turned 18 months on 27 December 2013 was extended two six-month times for its term. After 27 December 2014 when the second term of the six-month extended period had finished, the plan of action was not extended more. But the work processes are underway in accord with the indicator 21 points.
According to the decision adopted by the meeting between the CTFMR and the Myanmar government on 26 July 2018, 21 points of the indicator were reduced to 11 points.
From then onward from the time of implementing the action plan to date, Myanmar in cooperation with the CTFMR has been complying with the action plan in allowing 1,029 child soldiers wrongly recruited to withdraw from the Tatmadaw and has handed them over to their parents.
Furthermore, the measures of scrutiny for 28 more child soldiers are being taken to hand them over to their parents and guardians. The action was taken against the officers and other ranks responsible for wrongly recruiting underage children and those without the willingness to join the armed forces.
Thanks to cooperation between the CTFMR and the Tatmadaw, the Myanmar Tatmadaw was removed from the list of recruiting child soldiers and deployment mentioned in the children and armed conflict annual report for 2019 of the UN Secretary-General issued on 15 June 2020, and then, one surveillance year was set for final revocation for the Myanmar Tatmadaw from the list.
The Myanmar Tatmadaw is complying with the laws, rules and regulations for recruitment during the surveillance period. Although the Myanmar Tatmadaw cooperates with the CTFMR, the children and armed conflict annual report of the UNSG issued on 21 June 2021 one-sidedly enlisted Myanmar on the list again without negotiation in advance.
Tatmadaw informs Ms Virginia Gamba, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, of the regular work process and accomplishment of the meeting decisions via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As such, UN bodies should recognize the efforts and cooperation of the Myanmar Tatmadaw and must join hands between them in future processes to seek the correct solutions without fail.
The Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services gave a remark to carry out the tasks which can be done systematically and inform CTFMR about completion of the work process. The Myanmar Tatmadaw informs Ms Virginia Gamba, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, of the regular work process and accomplishment of the meeting decisions via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As such, UN bodies should recognize the efforts and cooperation of the Myanmar Tatmadaw and must join hands between them in future processes to seek the correct solutions without fail.
