Human Rights Education Institute of Burma

Burma will enforce a law against child soldiers and allow the U.N. access to military units to check for underage recruits, the U.N. said on Wednesday, following the signing of an agreement in Naypyitaw, the capital.

The U.N. secretary-general's special representative for children in armed conflict will witness the signing of an agreement for the signing of children from the Burmese armed forces on Wednesday, a UN spokesman told reporters on Tuesday.

Myanmar Times (Volume 32, No. 631) - THAILAND wants to strengthen cooperation with Myanmar against human trafficking, the Thai representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights said in Yangon last week.

UN-verified accounts of child soldiers undermine junta's assurances on democratic reforms

Children are being sold as conscripts into the Burmese military for as little as $40 and a bag of rice or a can of petrol. Despite assurances from Burma's ruling junta that it is cleaning up its act in a bid to see Western sanctions lifted, recruitment of child soldiers remains rampant.

KNG - According to officials with the Kachin Independence Organization, mortar shells fired today by Burma's armed forces killed two children and injured two adults during fighting in central Kachin state.

LAIZA, Kachin State—The Burmese army is using underage boys for forced labour and is coercing porters to fight on the front line against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), according to accounts given to The Irrawaddy by four teenagers who say they served as porters for the army.

BEIJING — Chinese police arrested 608 suspects and rescued 178 children in busts of two separate child trafficking networks, authorities said on Wednesday.

The Irrawaddy - In a recent series of addresses to servicemen, Burma's Minister for Defense Lt-Gen Hla Min reiterated time and again that the country's armed forces or Tatmadaw was made up of volunteers and that suggestions by foreign media that the army recruited children and underage soldiers was “fabricated and exaggerated.” He accused armed ethnic groups of being the only guilty party with regard to the forced recruitment of minors.