Complaint mechanism to be set up for crimes against minors in conflict

23 July 2020
Complaint mechanism to be set up for crimes against minors in conflict
(File) A group of captured child soldiers in Myanmar's northern Kachin State. Photo: IRIN

With scores of children killed and maimed each year in Myanmar’s long-running ethnic wars, and hundreds conscripted as laborers, the government is setting up a national complaint mechanism for reporting violence and sexual crimes against minors in regions under conflict, RFA reported quoting officials.

In 2019, Myanmar’s Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement set up a Committee on the Prevention of Grave Violations against Children in Armed Conflict and enacted a Child Rights Law to align its national policies and regulations with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Win Myat Aye, Myanmar’s minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, will oversee the process, which will include officials from the home affairs and defence services ministries who will take action against perpetrators of violence against children.