The Myanmar regime claimed on Friday that it had already discharged 93 minors from military service, countering a U.N. report last month that accused it and allies of recruiting more than 400 children, many in combat roles.
In a rare admission published in regime media, Naypyidaw said it conducted a verification process last year that resulted in the discharge of 93 verified minors, who were also provided with financial assistance.
“To date, only 18 suspected minor cases remain pending verification,” a regime committee said in a statement published in the Global New Light of Myanmar.
It is unclear when the 93 minors were released.
Myanmar’s military and the armed groups affiliated to it last year recruited 467 boys and 15 girls, including over 370 children used in combat roles, the U.N. Secretary-General’s report on Children and Armed Conflict stated.
Anti-regime groups had also recruited children, the report said, although their number was far lower than that of the military.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since a 2021 coup that unseated the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, causing widespread protests that morphed into a nationwide armed uprising against the military.
Established ethnic armed groups and resistance groups formed in the wake of the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup have gained control over much of Myanmar’s borderlands, hemming the regime forces largely into the country’s central plains.
The struggling military in 2024 activated a mandatory military service law, conscripting young people to replenish its depleted ranks after months of relentless fighting forced it to cede swathes of territory.
Nearly 3.5 million people are displaced from their homes in Myanmar, with children accounting for over 33 percent of that population in 2024, according to UNICEF.
The largest proportion of child recruitment appears to have taken place in western Arakan (Rakhine) State, home to the minority Rohingya community, where the Myanmar military – along with two allies fighting there – enlisted 300 minors, according to the U.N. report.
Reuters reported last year that children as young as age 13 were fighting on the frontlines in Rakhine, citing a U.N. official and two Rohingya fighters.
More than one million Rohingya driven out of Myanmar remain confined in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, where militant recruitment and violence surged last year.
REUTERS
