Myanmar should release all its child soldiers and allow UN officials to verify government claims that officers have been punished for recruiting minors into the army, the UN chief said.
There are credible reports that Myanmar's army continues to recruit children under 18 despite an official prohibition of the practice, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his report on Friday to the UN Security Council.
Recruiters often lure poor children with promises of shelter and food, while others are picked up for not having identification cards and threatened with arrest unless they join the army, Ban said. Army commanders sometimes pay "brokers" US$30 and a bag of rice for each recruit.
The army is "reportedly under enormous pressure" to increase recruitment rates, and money and rice are offered as incentives to keep up the pace, Ban said.
He said that, according to reports, "if a soldier wants to leave the army ... he must recruit as many as four replacements."
The UN has also received credible reports that a number of children have been arrested for desertion and sentenced to prison for up to five years, Ban said.
The report covered the period between July 2005 and this September. Both Myanmar's government and ethnic guerrilla groups have long been accused of using child soldiers, and both sides have acknowledged the allegations as the UN has highlighted the issue.
Responding to a report last month by New York-based Human Rights Watch, Myanmar's government said it had strengthened regulations forbidding the recruitment of minors since establishing a committee to oversee the problem in 2004.
The military dismissed some 141 minors and returned them to their parents between 2004 and this August, said Ye Htut, deputy director general of Myanmar's Information Ministry. Disciplinary action was taken against nearly 30 military personnel for violating recruitment rules, he said.
Ban acknowledged that "the government has shown increasing interest in addressing underage recruitment and has engaged the United Nations on the issue."
He said the UN has received periodic updates since 2005 from Myanmar's Committee for the Prevention of Recruiting Underaged Children from Military Recruitment.
But he said the UN has been largely unable to verify government claims that those responsible for underage recruitment have been disciplined or that any children have been released. The UN team has not been given access to any minors the government claims to have freed, he said.
The report called for "transparent and accountable disciplinary procedures for all persons, military or civilian, who violate recruitment rules and regulations."
Ban also criticized the government for denying UN official access to areas where groups of guerrillas operate, leaving the world body's investigators unable to verify the most recent reports of children in their ranks.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion