"Children comprise a highly vulnerable segment of any society and this is especially the case in a country marred by conflict, such as Burma. In the case of Burma especially, children form a large percentage of the total population, with UNICEF estimating the under-18 population of Burma to be 15,772,000 out of a total population of 48,379,000 in 2006. Thus, children comprise around 33 percent of the people of Burma.1 Despite Burma having ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1991 under the then ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the rights of children in Burma today remain as tenuous as ever. Over the course of 2008, various civil society actors such as exile media and International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) provided accounts of the rights of children being violated both in urban and rural environments. The CRC states clearly that children require ?special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection.” This proved to be a luxury that was not afforded to Burma?s children over the course of 2008. The Burmese regime was furthermore in breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in its treatment of the rights of children throughout the year, in another example of the State Peace and Development Council showing scant concern for either the rights of its citizenry or for the stipulations of international law. Patterns of abuse in Burma are strongly connected to patterns of military control, thus the nature of abuse which children face in Burma largely depends on the extent to which they live under State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military control. For those living under consolidated SPDC control, the intensive militarisation of Burmese society, which relies on abusive mechanisms of civilian control and exploitation of their resources, undermines almost every aspect of children?s rights. Militarisation requires extensive national budgetary spending on the military. Such expenditures come at the expense of other areas, such as health and education. According to figures released by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2007, the SPDC was spending around 40 percent of the national budget on the military, opposed to 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent on health and education respectively..."