Myanmar armed forces released 75 child soldiers from military service, the UN said, amid international outrage over alleged abuses committed by troops in the country’s numerous ongoing conflicts.
Knut Ostby, the UN Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for Myanmar, and June Kunugi, Representative of the UNICEF, this said in a joint statement on Friday.
Myanmar has now discharged 924 underage recruits since signing up to a joint action plan on child soldiers with UN agencies in June 2012, UN said.
The discharge was “one more positive development in the government’s effort to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children within the Tatmadaw,” they said.
Both the military – known as the Tatmadaw – and the ethnic guerrilla groups it has been fighting for decades and blacklisted by the UN for using child soldiers.
The U.S. took Myanmar off its list of the worst offenders in the use of child soldiers in 2017, before reinstating it this year.
The Tatmadaw and seven other groups remained “‘persistent perpetrators’ in the recruitment and use of children in Myanmar,” the UN said.
Spokesman for the Myanmar military and the government were not immediately available for comment.
Myanmar’s military was condemned internationally for human rights abuses including the recruitment of child soldiers during half a century of military rule.
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Allegations of abuses continued to be levelled against Myanmar soldiers in spite a transition from full military rule that saw Nobel laureate Aung-San Suu-Kyi assume control over the civilian administration in 2016.
In western Rakhine state, the military has launched harsh crackdowns in response to attacks by Rohingya Muslims since 2016, sending hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh.
UN-mandated investigators on Monday accused the army chief, Senior General Min Aung-Hlaing, of overseeing a campaign with “genocidal intent’’ against the Rohingya and recommended he and other senior officials be prosecuted.
The International Criminal Court is considering whether it has jurisdiction over events in Rakhine, while the U.S., the EU and Canada have sanctioned Myanmar military and police officers over the crackdown.
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