(UNICEF) – Wearing traditional Myanmar checkered lungyis and starched white shirts with rounded collars, the young people sit down in rows of chairs and wait for further instruction. Most of them sit quietly but some fidget nervously and shift in their seats, craning their necks forward to see how the ceremony is progressing. They are 80 children and young people, all once recruited and used in the Tatmadaw. It is their final roll call as they prepare to leave the armed forces, discharged on the grounds that they should never have been enlisted in the first place. This is the eighth round of children released since June 2012 when the Government of Myanmar signed an Action Plan with the United Nations to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children in the Tatmadaw.
