Burma has the largest number of child soldiers in the world.

Despite international criticism and the SPDC’s creation of the Committee for Prevention of Military Recruitment of Underage Children, international reports state that the Tatmadaw (Burmese Army) has not only not stopped recruiting children, but has actually increased their recruitment. As of mid-2006, generals have required a quota of 7,000 new recruits each month in efforts to build up the military, now around 400,000. Low pay and brutal treatment has previously hampered recruitment, but since the Tatmadaw put down the Saffron Revolution in 2007 even fewer men will join the forces voluntarily. Without men to recruit, and under the threat of serious punishment for failing to meet quota, more and more military officials are turning to children to fulfill their requirement. It is estimated that one in five soldiers is a child.

Recruitment can entail any number of tactics. Sometimes children join under economic and social pressure and other times they are coerced into service. A tactic becoming much more frequent is enlistment under threat of jail or torture. Escapees have cited how they were apprehended in public places under the auspices of not having proper identification or loitering and then offered the chance of military service in lieu of going to jail. When these recruits fail the medical exam for growth deficiencies (height, weight, genital development), their captors will bribe the examiners to pass them in order to fulfill their quotas. Human Rights Watch reports that at other times officials will sell their recruits to different battalions or centers for anywhere between 25,000 and 50,000 kyat, a sum worth one and a half to three times or more the average monthly salary of an army private.

Once apprehended child soldiers are detained until they can complete an 18-week basic military training program. These programs often involve strenuous physical labor, and recruits are beaten or otherwise severely punished for failing. After training children are used for any number of jobs: cooks, porters, spies, etc, but most commonly in combat. Those who try to escape face the threat of death, and those who do are generally caught shortly after and either imprisoned or re-enlisted. The Human Rights Education Institute of Burma reported that the extreme psychological abuse causes child soldiers to cry themselves to sleep in humiliation or attempt suicide either by themselves or by volunteering for the most dangerous of enlistments. Those who attempt to rationalize their war experiences distort their basic understandings of right and wrong. Children are normally only discharged in exchange for more recruits.

According to a Human Rights Watch report titled, “My Gun Was As Tall As Me”, non-state opposition armies also employ the use of child soldiers. These armies include the United Wa State Army, the Karen National Liberation Army, Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, Karenni Army, Shan State Army-South, People’s Democratic Front, All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front and Mong Tai Army. The report estimated that about 2,000 of the 20,000 troops of United Wa State Army may be children, making it by far the single largest use of child soldiers among the non-state armed groups. Many of them are forcibly conscripted. The report also mentioned that other non-state armies, whose troops total around 5,000 or 6,000, may have 50 to 500 child soldiers. Kachin Independence Army happens to be the only non-state army to conscript women and girl soldiers and is reportedly still on occasion forcibly conscripting girls under 18.

The UN has repeatedly threatened the use of targeted economic sanctions for the regime’s noncompliance with the Convention on the Rights of Children, which Burma is a signatory to. However thus far the UN has taken no serious action to this end, and while international organizations are working to rehabilitate and halt the use of child soldiers in Burma, strict operating restrictions by the regime has made their efforts difficult. Child recruitment in many non-state opposition armies appear to be decreasing, and several groups appear willing to respond to international pressure on this issue.