Burma: The Plight of Children Under Military RulePublished on 19 May 2011 in Alternative Reports, Resources by admin
The following is an excerpt from the document “CRC Shadow Report on Burma: The Plight of Children Under Military Rule” by the Child Rights Forum of Burma submitted on 29 April 2011:
Growing up under military rule has a profound and devastating affect on children and young people in Burma. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) explicitly requires State parties to ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child. Children in Burma, however, grow up amidst acute challenges to the realisation of their most basic human rights, fundamental to life, including the rights to food, shelter, physical security, and access to basic health care and education. Policies and practices of the State party, and its armed forces (Tatmadaw), remain the primary threat to these and other rights protected under the CRC, rather than poverty or incapacity due to Burma’s status as a developing nation. The violence, abuse and hardship that young people suffer as a result of political violence, armed conflict and authoritarian political systems can severely impair their development and chances of survival. When parents and family members are killed, disappeared or unlawfully detained, children’s rights are further violated.
Children in Burma account for almost half of the population and are the key to its future development and growth, if they themselves are given the chance to develop and grow. Yet the environment in which the majority of Burma’s children grow up is fraught with numerous challenges to their survival and development. Access to basic rights such as health care, food, education, protection from abuse and exploitation are almost non-existent. Children in Burma face arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and torture for their political beliefs. Religious and ethnic minority children face persecution, discrimination and additional barriers in accessing basic services. Militarization, armed conflict, abuse (particularly forced labour), and exploitation of natural resources in ethnic areas leads to loss of livelihoods, crippling poverty, mass displacement, and the denial of basic needs of local communities, all of which directly endanger children’s rights, and cost many their very lives.
Violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including the use of child soldiers, torture, deliberate and indiscriminate killing and maiming of civilians, forced labour, attacks on civilian objects including the food supply, and obstruction of humanitarian assistance are not isolated incidents. The evidence collected by member organizations of the Child Rights Forum of Burma (CRFB) provides further evidence to the growing body of documentation that these violations are widespread and committed with impunity, suggesting that they are systematic, and are conducted with institutional support. These acts likely constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined under customary international law, which is reflected in the provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and are currently not being investigated in Burma within the domestic legal system. Evidence collected for this report indicates that, in Burma, children are also subject to these crimes. Families expressed reluctance to report violations to authorities out of fear of retribution, but also due to a lack of faith in the judicial system to deliver adequate and fair legal remedies in a manner consistent with basic standards of justice. CRFB supports the position of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar that “failing to act on accountability in Myanmar will embolden the perpetrators of international crimes and further postpone long-overdue justice…If the Government fails to assume this responsibility, then the responsibility falls to the international community.”
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