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Dawn 15th March
CHILDREN ARE A COUNTRY'S FUTURE. WHAT ABOUT BURMA?
"Children are the country's future." "Today's children are
tomorrow's adults" and
other such common sayings illustrate the importance of children to the
nation's future
development. A nation's children grow up to become valuable members of
society who
contribute to its development.
International and national laws are intended to guarantee
children protection from
exploitation and abuse and to safeguard their well being. Many
government policies and
programs are promulgated to implement children's rights recognized in the
United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child which states "Every child has
inherent rights,
and nation-states shall ensure the maximum survival and development of
children."
Tragically, however, the plight of Burmese children is everywhere
worsening.
Children are the innocent victims of military's gross mismanagement of
the country military
regime, often suffering more severely than adults. The ruling military
regime is incapable of
solving the political, economic and social problems they themselves have
created.
Rampant human rights violations and the on-going civil war are
contributing to worsening
conditions of children in Burma.
Burma ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in
1991. This was seen
as a positive sign, and improved Slorc's image for the world community,
but the actual
treatment of children can be shown to be absolutely contrary to the
object and purpose of
the Convention, according to the report on the situation of human rights
in Myanmar by
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights. Interestingly, in Burma,
children, minors, who
protest against the Slorc face the same harsh treatment as adults.
In a report by UNICEF, the plight of Burmese children is directly
linked to the
country's economic collapse: "Due to inflation and declining living
standards, social
problems such as early childbearing, marital disruption, migration and
urbanization are
likely to worsen, contributing to a rise in child abandonment, labor,
homelessness, abuse
and neglect."
The desperate state of Burma's children was noted in a
confidential draft report by
UNICEF officials in 1992. The opening appeal gave an alarming warning of
the scale of
human rights abuses children in Burma face: "Many children are orphaned,
abandoned,
trafficked, exploited in the labor force, institutionalized or jailed.
Some are used in drug
running, while others are targets of ethnic discrimination. In the civil
war, children have
become victims or participants in armed conflicts, at times used as
porters, human shields
or human minesweepers. Although we do not know exactly how many children
suffer
these conditions, our knowledge has increased recently from new
reports."
Children under 14 represent an estimated 36 per cent of Burma's
population. The
infant mortality rate in Burma is 94 per 1,000 live birth, the fourth
highest among the
nations of the East Asia and Pacific region. The mortality rate for those
under the age of
five is the fourth highest in the region, 147 per 1,000. And the maternal
mortality rate
is the third highest in the region at the official rate of 123 per
100,000 lives births. (United
Nations agencies surmise that the actual maternal mortality rate is in
fact higher, 140
or more per 100,000)
The reasons for these high mortality rates are malnutrition, lack
of access to safe
water and sanitation, lack of access to health services and lack of
caring capacity, which
includes programs for childhood development, primary education and health
education. In
a country once known as the "rice basket of Asia", ten per cent of
children under three
suffer from severe malnutrition, according to UNICEF's draft report in
1992.
Obviously, there is a great need in Burma for greater investment
in health and
education. Yet government expenditure in both sectors, as proportions of
the budget,
has been falling steadily. Education accounted for 5.9 per cent of the
budget in 1992-93,
5.2 percent in 1993-94 and only 5 percent in 1994-95. Similarly
government spending
on health care has dropped from 2.6 per cent in 1992-93 to 1.8 per cent
in 1993-94 and
down to 1.6 per cent in 1994- 95.
The plight of Burma's children, as clear from these statistics,
is symptomatic of the
general deprivation and exploitation of children taking place throughout
Burma today.
There is little welfare support, even for those who have lost parents in
the armed conflicts.
Less than 20 per cent of school children complete more than four grades
of primary
school, and across the country many children enjoy no childhood at all;
they are simply put
to work. UNICEF deduces that as many as four million out of a total of
11.8 millions six to
15 year-olds may be working today.
The over four - decades long civil war between the ruling regime
and armed ethnic
groups is another burden worsening conditions for many Burmese children.
The military
routinely violates human rights, including torture and summary execution,
in the context of
its counter-insurgency activities against various ethnic minority groups,
which have been
struggling for greater autonomy since 1949. The ethnic people suffer
greatly as a result of
human rights abuses committed during Tamadaw operations, especially
during the forced
relocation of villages, enforced portering and the seizure of land and
property.
Women and children are the most vulnerable victims of human
rights violations by
the military in the war zone. These is clear evidence that the majority
of the refugees
from Burma who have fled to Thailand to seek asylum are women and their
children. The
global situation of children is reflected in Burma: most of the
casualties of war are women
and their children; most of the refugees and displaced persons are women
and their
children; most of the poor are women and their children in Burma.
Once children from Burma reach refugee camps along the border,
although they
may be more secure, they find their lives in these primitive camps harsh
with severe
restrictions on movement, trade and access to land. Living almost in
isolation, deprived of
proper education, without a homeland, the children's lives are without a
future.
Naw Phaw Mu, now 12-year-old, came with her family from Papun
district and
reached Shoklo Refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border when she was only
6-year-old.
"I can't recall what my native village looked like. I just remember that
there were some
paddy fields outside my village and a church where my father always took
me every
Sunday. The other thing I can recall is the day the soldiers came and
beat some villagers in
front of all the others." She does not remember the reason for the
beating. Her
voice quavered. "The soldier beat the villagers again and again. The
villagers were so
bloody. I was afraid and wanted to cry loud but my mother told me not
make a
noise. Otherwise, they soldiers would beat me too."
"I feel this is my home." she continued. "I have been living
here for long time. I
know many people and have many friends. But I don't know when I can go
back to my real
home in Burma. I don't know what will be tomorrow. My parents told me we
may have to
move somewhere else sometime soon because of yellow band gang (DKBA)."
Inside Burma all members of the population are liable to seizure
by the army for
forced portering and forced duties. There was a time when women and
children might
have been spared, but in the past few yeas there is increasing evidence
of children being
taken in the forced labor projects across the country. As the Slorc has
opened up the
economy to international investments, it has forced civilians to rebuild
the country's
infrastructure which has been badly neglected by the previous
government.
Hundreds of thousands of local people have been forced to work
without pay
constructing roads, railways and bridges across the country; forced
laborers include
children as young as 12 year-olds. Publicly Slorc has claimed that no
children under 16
work in the labor projects but child forced labor is common and well -
documented. In
Mon State and Tenassarim Division where forced labor is widely practiced,
every person
between 16- 60 from every household are ordered to work for two week each
month.
When the adults cannot fulfill this quota, they are required to find and
hire their own
laborers at prices ranging from 1,500 to 3,500 kyats per person or to pay
to the authorities
the same price for the cost of hiring their substitute laborers. The able
- bodied men are
mostly the breadwinner of their own families and are under great pressure
to provide for
their families because of the ever - escalating cost of living and
widespread unemployment
in the country.
Understandable, the family breadwinner cannot afford to spend
much of time
working on forced labor projects without payment. This means that many
children in the
rural areas must to go and work in place of their parents so their
parents can devote their
time to the family's livelihood.
Due to the economic hardships and human rights abuses back home,
many youth
and children with their family migrate to neighboring countries,
especially to Thailand,
with the dream of a better life. Political and economic difficulties in
their homeland are the
significant factors that forced these children to seek refuge in
Thailand. The political
upheavals in Burma is the "big push" that has driven many Burmese and
Karen children
out of their own country- sometimes literally at bayonet point. In
general, children migrate
to big cities in Thailand with their families or alone. Often they must
beg or drift on the
street in order to gain a living and will consider any work that enables
them to survive.
While their parents are illegally working odd jobs in Thailand, some
children also have to
find jobs or end up as street children. Without language skill and
because of their parents'
illegal status, many Burmese children are found in the streets of Bangkok
and other cities in
Thailand begging money from pedestrians.
According to a Thai NGO working with street children, the
majority come from
Laos, with most of the rest from Cambodia and Burma. Less frequently
children from
Bangladesh and Pakistan are spotted begging in Bangkok. For these street
urchins, child
prostitution is a common fate.
Many Burmese and Karen children are working in places such as
construction sites,
gas stations, restaurants and fishing boats in the provinces along the
border such as Tak
and Ranong.
The life awaiting immigrant child laborers in Thailand is
extremely harsh. Most
children don't dare to escape because they entered Thailand illegally and
don't know who
they can ask for help. Employers prefer children as they are cheap,
productive and
obedient. Children working in the industrial sector have no contract of
employment and so
find it difficult to stand up for themselves and fight for their rights.
The demand by Thai
factories for child laborers is increasing all the time.
When these "illegal alien" children are arrested in Thailand,
they are held at the
Immigration Detention Center until their cases are processed and they can
be sent home.
Often this takes from six months to one year. There have also been many
complaints from
NGOs working for children's welfare that the children at the Immigration
Detention Center
are treated badly. Children are confined under appalling conditions,
crammed together
with adult detainees into small, dark, stuffy rooms.
In Burma, children regardless of their race, religion and color
are exploited and
abused, unprotected by the government. Further, Slorc, the ruling
military junta, is
itself an abuser and exploiter of Burma's children. Children are crying
while Slorc is
enjoying the profits from foreign investment. Children are dying while
Slorc is building
hotels and developing other tourist sites. Children are starving while
Slorc is proudly
claiming that the Burmese economy is booming. The life and future of
Burmese children
cannot be bright until Slorc relinquishes power and a democratic
government attends to the
needs of Burma's future, her own neglected children.