The junta’s conscription drive has been targeting men since early last year, but with reports spreading that women’s names are now being collected, some underage girls are getting married – with their parents’ blessing – as a means to shield themselves from the draft.
By KHIN HNIN PHYU SOE | FRONTIER
In early July, junta officials visited the home of Nan Kay, a 17-year-old Pa-O girl living in a village in southern Shan State’s Hsi Hseng Township, to add the teenager’s name to their list of potential conscripts into the military.
Nan Kay and her family were shaken by the visit.
“When the officials told us why they were here, my mom sat down and cried. I stood still like a statue and didn’t know what to do,” Nan Kay said, using a pseudonym to protect her identity.
She is the only daughter in a family of six – also consisting of her parents and three older brothers who are working in Thailand – and she’s the only one among her siblings still living in the village.
Although the recruitment officials told Nan Kay that she would not yet need to report for military service, knowing that her name was on the list instilled a feeling of deep fear.
Instead of waiting to be drafted, she decided to take drastic action. Less than a week after the officials’ visit, she ran away with her 19-year-old boyfriend, who is from the same village, and sought refuge in a bigger town in Shan, which she asked Frontier not to name.
Nan Kay’s boyfriend has been on the conscription list since February, but he has been paying K50,000 to K100,000 (US$12-$24 at the market rate) a month to avoid military service. That’s not an option for Nan Kay, whose family is too poor to pay such fees.
“At first we just ran away to a bigger town. I called my mom, and she said we couldn’t just keep running away,” Nan Kay said. “She told us it would be better to get married, so we signed the marriage papers in the town. They said married couples are exempt from the military draft, but we’re still too scared to go back to our village.” more
Avoiding conscription
The junta began enforcing Myanmar’s long-dormant Military Service Law in February last year. According to the statute, men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 can be conscripted into military service. Married women and women with children are exempt.
For more than a year after enforcement began, the junta focused on male recruits, but in the middle of this year officials started collecting the names of potential female conscripts.
According to an August report from the Myanmar Defence and Security Institute, a research organisation established by former military officers who defected after the 2021 coup, the regime has already held training for the first batch of female conscripts at Officer and Sergeant Training School 4 in Yangon Region’s Hmawbi Township.
Since early last year, meanwhile, 15 batches of male conscripts have completed training and the junta is now recruiting for batch 16.
With the regime showing increased interest in recruiting women, families like Nan Kay’s see marriage as the only shield against being forced into the army. So far there have been no precise surveys or statistics to confirm the extent of the early marriage phenomenon since conscription began. However, women’s rights and human rights activists told Frontier that the draft is now one of the main factors pushing young and underage girls into marriage. Other, longer-standing post-coup factors include political instability and economic hardship.
Daw Moon Nay Li, joint general secretary of the Women’s League of Burma, said evidence of an overall rise in early marriages has emerged from information collected and shared by women’s forums, WLB member organisations and safe houses.
She said the rush to marriage is occurring in both rural and urban communities, and many of those affected are girls under the age of 17 who are forced into adulthood before they finish school.
Julia, a teenager from a village in Waingmaw Township, Kachin State, told Frontier that her 16-year-old sister got married earlier this year even though her name had not yet been added to the conscription list.
“My sister’s boyfriend’s name was on the list. He’s 19 and my sister is only 16. He’s the only son and his parents couldn’t bear to send him to the military. They came to our house to ask my sister to marry him, saying that an arranged marriage could provide a temporary solution to the conscription problem,” Julia said, using a pseudonym for her protection.
“Though my sister and her boyfriend were already in a relationship, my sister cried and said she didn’t want to get married yet. Our parents were hesitant because my sister is so young, but they finally agreed, hoping marriage would help her avoid conscription. They got married about two months ago.”
Julia, meanwhile, said she hopes to leave Myanmar before her name is added to the military draft, but the possibility of fleeing seems a distant dream.
Since March, men between the ages of 18 and 35 have been banned from leaving the country. For young women, only those who can show records of having travelled overseas in the past and returned to Myanmar are allowed to leave. For now, only women over 27 and men over 35 are allowed to emigrate legally.
“Now that women are starting to be recruited, my sister and I could be added to the list at any time,” Julia said. “I have to go abroad soon before my name is registered.”
Moon Nay Li said the military intentionally targets struggling families for conscription because they can’t afford to bribe their way out of it.
“Wealthy families can pay monthly bribes to ward or village administrators to avoid conscription. Poor families from rural communities are the ones who are suffering the most under the draft,” she said.
She added that many of those who can’t afford to pay up to K100,000 a month to avoid military service flee to areas not controlled by the junta or to border regions, often illegally crossing into neighbouring countries. The other option is marriage.
Consequences of early marriage
While early marriage might help teenage girls avoid military service, it also has negative consequences. For young girls, for example, it almost always means an end to their education.
“Normally, a 15- or 16-year-old should be in high school. But due to COVID-19 and fighting and insecurity after the coup, schools closed for a long time and many children had their education disrupted,” Moon Nay Li said.
“When a girl gets married at a young age, her family responsibilities increase. When a woman has a limited education, her children also face disadvantages. It’s a cycle of loss.”
According to a United Nations Development Programme report released in October, gender gaps create barriers in the education and employment sectors in Myanmar, and nearly one-fourth of women drop out of school because of domestic responsibilities.
The psychological toll is also heavy. Forced marriages rob young people of choice and maturity. Some girls experience deep trauma, unable to adjust to the sudden shift in roles from teenager to wife.
“A woman can be traumatised if she is forced into marriage when she’s not mature. That trauma can also affect her children, passing from one generation to the next,” Moon Nay Li said.
The Child Rights Act makes it a crime for an adult – defined as age 18 and older – to marry a girl under 16. Forcing a girl to marry without her consent can be prosecuted as rape under Section 376 of the Penal Code.
Meanwhile, legal experts say Myanmar’s marriage and age-of-consent laws have been loosely enforced since the coup, leaving young people vulnerable.
Daw Thinzar Mya, a former judge who joined the Civil Disobedience Movement in protest against the coup, told Frontier that girls between the ages of 16 and 18 can marry with their parents’ permission.
“However, any marriage without the girl’s consent is illegal. The problem is that under the Military Service Law, such choices are not real choices,” she said.
Cycle of fear
The junta is not the only culprit of engaging in forced conscription. Some ethnic armed groups fighting the regime have also been accused of forcing civilians to join their armies, and some have even declared official conscription policies.
Network Media Group reported that both the junta and the Kachin Independence Army have scaled up conscription in Kachin’s Hpakant Township, with residents saying that up to 500 people were forcibly recruited by both sides during one two-week period in October.
On October 11, after activists and resistance networks asked KIA officials to end forced recruitment, the Kachin group released 17 women and 13 minors it had pressed into service. However, the anti-junta Public’s Network-Hpakant, which took part in the negotiations, said the KIA has continued to forcibly recruit locals since then.
A women’s rights activist with more than 10 years of experience studying various forms of violence against women in Myanmar said child marriage had been declining in the country before the coup. However, this progress has been reversed since the military takeover.
“Now, fear and insecurity are reversing that progress,” she told Frontier, asking that her name not be revealed for security reasons. “In Myanmar today, child marriage is no longer a matter of tradition or a response to poverty. It’s a direct result of authoritarian rule, war and fear.”
Desperate decisions made to avoid conscription – whether bribery, fleeing to neighbouring countries or child marriage – are already having consequences that will reverberate for generations. The repercussions, including lost education, early motherhood, psychological trauma and the weakening of social ties, will make it all that much harder to rebuild the country in peacetime.
“We must analyse this in terms of education,” said CDM judge Thinzar Mya. “A decline in educational levels leads directly to a decline in the nation. A nation is built upon strong human resources – young people with good interpersonal skills and critical thinking. The government must see its failure to provide education for these children. We should not lay the blame on young people for getting married early.”
In the meantime, girls like Nan Kay and Julia’s younger sister have already become victims of early marriage, not out of choice but because they and their families saw it as the best option for survival in Myanmar.
“If the conscription law didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be going through this,” Julia said, admitting feeling guilty over her role in convincing her younger sister to marry. “I really hate the military.”
