Children without Protection

Although children under the age of 18 make up approximately 40 percent of Burma’s population, they remain almost completely neglected by the country’s government. They are considered legally liable at the age of seven, yet there is no juvenile justice system and they are not taught their rights in school.

The military junta claims that it provides free public education for students up until the age of 16. However, students and their families are forced to subsidize schools—paying for uniforms, materials, buildings and teachers’ salaries. Costs vary from place to place, with affordability, accessibility, quality and capacity to pay worse in ethnic and rural areas. Under this system, 35 percent of children do not complete more than five years of schooling, and only 25 percent enroll in high school.

According to a 2005 UN Development Programme (UNDP) household survey, one-third of the Burmese population lives below the poverty line. Inflation is adding to the economic burden, with the price of rice, for example, up by 30 percent in 2008 alone. To help their families survive in this harsh economic environment, many children work in the informal economy, performing unskilled labor without any legal protection.

In the urban informal sector, children work in a variety of industries, including food processing and light manufacturing; many others work as street vendors, refuse collectors and as tea shop attendants. According to 2002 official statistics, 6 percent of urban children worked, but only 4 percent of working children earned wages; many were employed in family enterprises.

In early September, the photographer Aung Gyi witnessed and recorded children aged around 11-13 years old doing heavy physical labor under the scorching sun. They were unloading barges, carrying baskets of gravel weighing at least 5 kilograms on their heads along 10-meter-long wooden planks. According to people at the worksite, they were paid 2,500 kyat (US $2.50) per day or 16 kyat ($0.16) per basket of gravel.

irrawaddy