Children Suffer Severely from Myanmar’s Pocket Wars: UN report

mmtimes.com-17 Jan 2018

Children suffer severely from Myanmar’s decades-old pocket wars between various ethnic armed groups and government security forces, the United Nations Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict said in a statement on Tuesday.

The fourth UN Secretary-General report on the impact of armed conflict on children in Myanmar, covering the period from February 1, 2013 to June 30, 2017, noted that despite the signing of the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with eight armed ethnic groups “grave violations were still registered during the reporting period, with recruitment and use being by far the most documented violation, followed by killing and maiming.”

The report also noted that the outbreak of violence in northern Rakhine State in August last year has further exacerbated the plight of the children.

The Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict has dispatched a fact-finding mission to Bangladesh to study the plight of the refugees from northern Rakhine and was expected to brief the Security Council working group about its findings, the statement said.

“Recent violence, especially in the northern and western parts of the country, are putting the children of Myanmar at greater risk of being used and abused by parties to conflict, while jeopardizing the progress made in the past years to end the recruitment and use of children,” said Virginia Gamba, special representative of the UN secretary-general for Children and Armed Conflict.

The cases of recruitment and use by the Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) have decreased over the reporting period, with 856 cases verified by the Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting (CTFMR), the statement said.

“The 2014 establishment of a tripartite mechanism involving the CTFMR and the ministries of Immigration and Defence accelerated the verification process of children associated with the Tatmadaw, leading to the release of more than 849 children and young people between February 2013 and January 2017,” it added.

The UN report lamented that “security and access constraints remained a constant challenge thus making the gravity and scale of violations perpetrated against children not fully exposed in the report.”

“The United Nations could verify only a limited number of cases of recruitment and use by armed groups, 22 out of 41 documented, affecting 59 boys and girls,” the statement said.

It said that during the period covered in the report, 41 children were killed and 104 maimed, most of whom (81 children) were injured by improvised explosive devices, landmines and explosive remnants of war.

“Fifty-three children were victims of direct armed clashes and cross-fire incidents between armed groups and Tatmadaw,” it said.

“A total of 40 children were reported abducted with a clear increase of cases of abduction by armed groups in late 2015 and 2016; close to half of the incidents were attributed to Tatmadaw,” the report said.

Gamba urged the Myanmar government to implement a joint action plan it signed in June 2012 with the UN to end recruitment of children in Tatmadaw and to give better protection to children in conflict areas.

“I encourage the Government to continue to speed up the implementation of its Action Plan, including through the development of accountability mechanisms,” she said.

“The UN remains ready to support these efforts,” Gamba added. “I urge all parties to conflict to refrain from violence and take all necessary measures to protect the boys and girls of Myanmar, in line with national and international law and Security Council resolutions.”

Last week, UNICEF reported that more than 60,000 Rohingya children remain nearly forgotten, trapped in appalling camps in central Rakhine “where the shelters teeter on stilts above garbage and excrement.”

“Partners have identified about 20 children separated from their families during the violence but estimate the total number to be at least 100 – most of whom are in parts of northern Rakhine State that they still cannot access,” Marixie Mercado, UNICEF spokesperson said in a news briefing in Geneva on January 9, after her visit to Myanmar from December 6, 2017 to January 3.