Burma (Myanmar) CSPA Country Profile • Stimson Center

CSPA Implementation Tracker

Burma (Myanmar)

Years Listed

Each shaded box corresponds to a year the country appeared on the CSPA list and what types of waivers it received, if any.

Burma has appeared on the CSPA list every year from 2010 to 2024, with the exception of 2017. The U.S. president fully waived CSPA prohibitions against the provision of U.S. arms sales and military assistance to Burma for one of these thirteen years, in 2016. However, Burma has never been slated to receive U.S. arms sales or military assistance subject to the CSPA. As a result, no actual U.S. arms sales or military assistance to Burma have been waived or prohibited due to the CSPA.

In February 2021, a military coup deposed Burma’s democratically elected government. In the years since, international observers have reported that the armed forces of Burma (known as the Tatmadaw), border guard forces, and military-backed militias have recruited and used child soldiers. According to the U.S. State Department, children were recruited into military service by civilian intermediary brokers or enlisted at the behest of family members. The Tatmadaw also forcibly recruited, through abduction, Rohingya children to serve in combat and support roles during military operations against various armed resistance forces.¹

Prior to the coup, certain military personnel and ethnic armed groups were involved in the recruitment and use of child soldiers, particularly in conflict-prone ethnic areas. Children of the urban poor were at particular risk, with reports from the UN and former child soldiers indicating that army recruiters, including civilian brokers, targeted orphans and children found alone in public areas. At times, military recruiters were known to threaten children with jail or physical abuse for refusing conscription.²

Prevention and protection efforts by the now-deposed civilian government before February 2021 included a July 2019 Child Rights Law that increased penalties for engaging in child soldier recruitment or use (never implemented); a 2020-2021 National Action Plan on the prevention of death, injury, and sexual harassment of children in armed conflict;³ and the formation of a National Committee on Implementation of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.⁴ The Ministry of Defense reported taking disciplinary action against a total of 65 members of the armed forces for child soldier recruitment between 2017 and 2020, though it did not report if it prosecuted any civilians involved in the practice.⁵ In addition, policy changes were made to streamline the demobilization of child soldiers and to allow the United Nations to enter into child soldier demobilization agreements with all armed ethnic groups.⁶ However, international observers expressed concern that relevant legislation in Burma did not adequately deter child soldier-related offenses due to the military’s constitutionally-guaranteed power, which limited the government’s ability to address military child soldier use and recruitment.⁷

There has been a dramatic decline in efforts to combat trafficking in Burma – including the recruitment and use of child soldiers – since the country’s February 2021 coup. While the Tatmadaw signed a UN Action Plan to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers in 2012 and released at least 284 soldiers suspected of being recruited as minors between 2016 and 2022, the military regime has since done little to cooperate and coordinate with the UN to implement the plan.⁸ Further, the regime has not enforced its own 2014 directive prohibiting the use of children by the military, nor has it instituted measures to protect children from being used in combat roles or for forced labor.⁹

For more information, see the U.S. State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report and 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. More information on the situation in Burma can also be found in the UN Secretary-General’s 2024 annual report on Children and Armed Conflict and 2021 country-specific report on Burma.