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Myanmar’s ruling military junta has begun initial steps to draft women for active military service, residents said, showing the military’s desperation to replenish its ranks amid a series of battlefield defeats and desertions in the country’s four-year civil war.
Last year, the junta enforced a 2010 military conscription law saying men aged 18-35 and single women 18-27 would be eligible for military service.
So far, it has conscripted only men — sometimes by force — but since mid-January, authorities have begun compiling lists of eligible women in the Yangon region, residents in several townships said, suggesting official conscription would begin in the future.
“The list of women has already been compiled, and many students are included in it,” said a woman living in Taketa township who she was worried because her 20-year-old daughter, a student at East Yangon University, was on the list for recruitment.
The woman asked her ward administrator for a postponement for her daughter because she is a student, but her request was denied, she said.
Married women are exempt from military service under the law, but married women without children who live in Kayan township were still included on the list, said a resident there who had to register.
“The law states that married women are exempt, [but] when I asked why my name was included, they said if I was not pregnant or did not have children, I would have to serve in the military without exception,” she added.
Getting ready
The military council denied that women had been called up for military service, and a representative from the Chairman’s Office of the Central Body for Summoning People’s Military Servants said authorities were simply taking a headcount of those eligible to serve.
“It is similar to a census — essentially a basic manpower registry,” the representative said. “There has been no separate call for women for military service at this time.”
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Myanmar military officer Capt. Zin Yaw, a member of the Civil Disobedience Movement that opposed the military’s seizure of power in 2021, said that the listings of women were part of a plan to recruit them for training, but not necessarily send them into combat.
“In the past, junta leader [Sen. Gen.] Min Aung Hlaing has shown interest in involving female officers,” Zin Yaw said. “There have also been cases where female military personnel … were called in and assigned roles.”
The junta’s council announced that women meeting the age requirements for military service under the country’s military service law will be recruited starting from their fifth week of military training.
Women from all 10 townships in Mon state in Myanmar’s south and from Kayin state and Tanintharyi region also have been recruited for military service since mid-2024, according to a survey by the Human Rights Foundation of Monland, which monitors human rights in Mon state.
Militia forcing recruitment
The Pa-O National Army, a state-sponsored militia that fights alongside junta soldiers against Pa-O rebels, is forcing women and underage girls to join the military service, they said.
Female recruits mostly have been sent to the front lines of armed combat between the junta and Karenni rebels at the Shan-Kayah state border since late last year, a Pa-O Youth Organization official said.
A directive requiring women to undergo military training in areas controlled by the Pa-O National Army could result in girls being deployed in front-line combat, residents and Pa-O organizations said.
Though it is difficult to verify the ages of the women sent to combat areas, it is known that they include women under the age of 18, the official from the Pa-O Youth Organization said.
“We began noticing women being sent to the front lines around the end of 2024, particularly in the fighting along the [Kayah state] and Shan border,” said the official. “Their presence in these areas is very evident. At times, a significant number of soldiers are deployed, and women are among them.”
Khun Aung Mann, general secretary of the Pa-O National Liberation Army, an ethnic armed organization that opposes the military regime, told RFA that he has received reports that the Pa-O militia has been training women for military service.
“The current situation is that both the [Pa-O] militia and the military council are in need of manpower,” he said. “Therefore, we believe that they will use women if necessary, as we are already witnessing the use of underage children on the battlefield.”
There were 15-year-old child soldiers among captured prisoners of war, he said.
Translated by Kalyar Lwin for RFA Burmese. edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.