Open Letter: Security Council must act now as Myanmar military junta’s forced conscription endangers peace, stability, and human security in Myanmar and the region   

To Members of the United Nations Security Council 

CC:       

UN Human Rights Council Members 

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar 

1 March 2024 

Re: Security Council must act now as Myanmar military junta’s forced conscription endangers peace, stability, and human security in Myanmar and the region   

Your Excellencies, 

We, 397 civil society organizations, call on the UN Security Council (UNSC) to take immediate action to ensure peace and stability in the region following the Myanmar military junta’s illegal enforcement of the conscription law. In particular, we call on Japan, as the President of the UNSC in March 2024, to convene an emergency meeting to put forward a binding resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to impose targeted economic sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo against the junta, and refer the crisis in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or create an ad hoc tribunal. In addition, the UNSC must provide substantial support to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as declared in Resolution 2669, and assist Myanmar’s neighboring countries to promptly guarantee legal protection for people fleeing the junta’s forced conscription and mass atrocity crimes. 

On 10 February 2024, the military junta announced the enforcement of the People’s Military Service Law, which the past military regime passed in 2010. Men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 will be at risk of forced conscription, and the age further extends to 45 and 35, respectively, for those with expert professions. Up to 14 million people across Myanmar are deemed eligible for this forced conscription, which requires serving up to five years during a state of emergency as is currently in place by the junta’s illegal declaration. Individuals face prison sentences of up to five years, hefty fines, or both, for failing to report for duty. The junta also reserves its arbitrary power to recall those who have already finished their military service. 

The junta’s forced conscription efforts exacerbate the already unprecedented violence caused by its countrywide terror campaign. As it rapidly loses ground to democratic resistance forces, the junta has resorted to forced conscription as psychological warfare to terrorize the population into submission, force people to kill each other against their conscience, and inflame inter-ethnic and inter-religious tension. This ruthless measure underlines the junta’s calculated move to escalate atrocities, exploiting new conscripts as expendable human shields, porters, and frontline fighters—evident in the Myanmar military’s sordid history, particularly its forced recruitment of children in violation of international law. The forced conscription thus explicitly goes against the UNSC’s demand for an immediate end to all forms of violence in Resolution 2669.  

This scheme to forcibly recruit 60,000 men in the first round will compound the severe instability and human insecurity that the junta has already unleashed on Southeast Asia. Young men have been kidnapped or otherwise compelled to join military service, according to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. Hundreds of Rohingya in internment camps in Rakhine State are being arrested and recruited into service, or persuaded to enlist in exchange for freedom of movement. Other reports indicate people in Bago Region and Yangon City are being forced to serve, leaving them no other choice but to bribe junta personnel or face outright extortion to evade conscription. Individuals in disenfranchised and impoverished sectors, such as garment workers, lack such options as the junta’s workforce data collection is underway.  

Meanwhile, the junta’s Labor Ministry curtails a route to flee the country by suspending recruitment drives of the Myanmar Overseas Employment Agencies Association. These realities will only lead to a massive influx of refugees and trafficking survivors into neighboring countries with track records of non-compliance with their international obligations, ensuring insufficient aid, no legal protection, and risk of refoulement. 

For over three years since the military’s illegal coup attempt, the people of Myanmar nationwide have categorically and unequivocally rejected the Myanmar military’s futile attempts to seize power. The military junta has absolutely no legal authority to enforce any law in Myanmar. In fact, this forced conscription law is nothing more than modern slavery or forced labor under both domestic and international law.  

We are alarmed by the sequence of events which led to the junta’s forced conscription: shortly after the ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar’s visit to Naypyitaw in January, and the Thailand-initiated and ASEAN-endorsed humanitarian assistance center in early February. Rather than restoring regional peace and stability and ensuring human security in Southeast Asia, these actions taken by the ASEAN Special Envoy and Thailand have only served to lend false legitimacy to the junta, emboldening it to intensify its terror campaign through forced conscription.  

ASEAN’s ineffective actions have enabled the junta to commit more atrocity crimes with total impunity, while only deepening the bloc’s complicity in these crimes. In addition, we are gravely concerned by Thailand’s approach to humanitarian assistance, as it involves the Myanmar Red Cross which is part of the Myanmar military’s security apparatus and cannot be trusted as a partner to provide humanitarian assistance to those subject to the junta’s heinous crimes.  

Excellencies, the UNSC can no longer continue to recklessly defer to ASEAN and its harmful approach which have to date jeopardized peace and stability in Myanmar and the region. With human security and civilian protection as its guiding principles, the UNSC must coordinate countries in the region to provide legal protection for Myanmar people fleeing from the junta’s terror campaign, including forced conscription and atrocities. 

As a criminal entity, the Myanmar military has also facilitated the expansion of criminally run zones in Myanmar—now hubs for transnational crimes, breeding illegal online scam centers and human trafficking from which it has profited. These organized crimes severely endanger peace and security in the region and beyond. In the face of these nefarious activities, Myanmar’s democratic resistance forces have pledged to join forces with China and Thailand to dismantle the criminal hubs. In this regard, the UNSC must provide political and practical support to these resistance forces to topple the criminal Myanmar military and combat this problem effectively. 

As the military junta weaponizes its forced conscription law, it is of utmost urgency that the UNSC act decisively: fulfill its mandate and implement its own resolutions to protect the people of Myanmar and establish peace and stability in Myanmar and the region. Once again, we urgently call on the UNSC to adopt a binding resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that enforces targeted economic sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo against the junta, and refers the crisis in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or establishes an ad hoc international criminal tribunal. Regional peace and stability will remain elusive unless and until peace and stability is secured in Myanmar, and the Myanmar military, as an illegal and international criminal entity, is held accountable for its decades of mass atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. 

Signed by 397civil society organizations, including 94 organizations that have chosen not to disclose their names because of the junta’s continued violence in Myanmar.

See the full list of signatories here.