Mr Chair,

Anti-Slavery International would like to remind the Commission that the current military regime of Burma, known as the State Peace and Development Council, acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in July 1991.

However, in Burma today, many children are denied their fundamental human rights including their right to education, to health and to life. Particularly in ethnic areas where armed conflicts are taking place, children’s right to life is seriously undermined. And when life is constantly under threat, children cannot possibly enjoy other rights enshrined in the Convention.

Students in Papun District, Karen State, pointed out that children do not attend school due to interrelated factors such as food scarcity, malaria, other health problems and the instability caused by the armed conflict. UNAIDS reported last year that one in three children will be ‘moderately to severely’ malnourished by the time they are five.

Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have reported that large numbers of Burma’s ethnic nationalities, including children, are taken from their villages by the regime and forced to work on so-called "development projects." In Karen, Karenni, Shan and Rakhine State, children are often requisitioned as porters, sentries, labourers on road construction, and even as minesweepers. Internally displaced children are most vulnerable in forced relocation sites or when hiding in the jungle.

[According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers Global Report 2001,] Burma is estimated to have one of the largest numbers of child soldiers of any country in the world, with up to 50,000 children serving in both government armed forces and armed opposition groups.

The girl child is particularly at risk in ethnic nationality area and conflict zones. On 7 January 2002, two Shan girls aged 16 and 17 were raped by SPDC troops in Larng Khur Township while fleeing to Thailand. On 19 February 2002, two Karen girls aged 17 and 18 were raped by a people’s militia leader at a forced relocation site in Palaw Township, Tenasserim Division. Unfortunately these are not isolated incidents.

As a result of the ongoing civil war, more than one million people are internally displaced, over 130,000 have taken shelter in refugee camps in Thailand, and another million are found as migrant workers in Thailand, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, etc. Amongst them, the majority are children.

In a society where children’s fundamental rights to grow and thrive are severely deprived, what can we expect for the future of that society?

In order for children in Burma to enjoy their fundamental rights enshrined in the Convention, we urge the Commission to call on the State Peace and Development Council:

2. To stop the use of children as forced labourers and as child soldiers;

3. To address the health and education crisis of children by providing an adequate allocation of the GDP to social services to all children;

4. To end the systematic forced displacement of ethnic nationalities; and

5. To ensure that all reported cases of abuse, rape and/or violence against children be investigated, with appropriate judicial sanctions applied to perpetrators.

Thank you.