The use of child soldiers has long beset Myanmar as a nation. However, the scourge may be ending soon after the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) freed dozens of soldiers under the age of 18.
International Business Times reported that MAF, also known Tatmadaw Kyi, has released 46 underage soldiers from service on March 12. The soldiers, who were wrongly recruited, were turned over to their respective families during a ceremony in Yangon, which was also attended by United Nations (UN) representatives.
An official statement of MAF said that the latest release was already the twelfth batch of child soldiers who were discharged from service. Including the recent batch, MAF has already released a total of 744 underage recruits since June 2012, when the government signed a joint action plan with the UN to end the use of children soldiers.
"The children and young people discharged will benefit from reintegration programs to help them re-start their lives and seize new opportunities for their own development and participation in the life of the country," the UN stated, as reported by Reuters.
Moreover, the UN has already initiated talks to some non-state armed groups in Myanmar that continue to recruit underage soldiers. These include the United Wa State Army and the dominant Kachin Independence Army, which rules large swaths of northern Kachin State in Myanmar.
MAF has long been accused by several human rights groups of abuses including the use of child soldiers, forceful recruitment of conscripts and land confiscation. The military has vowed to professionalize its forces when they handed the power to a semi-civilian government in 2011.
According to a 2015 report by the Child Soldiers International (CSI), the recruitment and employment of children by state armed forces and armed groups have been widespread, and it has been monitored by the UN and several human rights organizations for over a decade. Despite the government's commitment in 2012 to end the longstanding problem, a research conducted by CSI discovered that Tatmadaw Kyi continues to forcibly recruit and use underage soldiers.
