"[This report was prepared as a submission to the UN Committee which is reviewing SLORC?s observance of the Convention on Rights of the Child, which SLORC ratified in 1991. Under the terms of the Convention, SLORC was required to submit a report to the Committee in 1993, but did not do so until September 1995. Their case comes before the Committee in Oct. 1996 or Jan. 1997. This report was submitted together with a 140-page Annex of excerpts from KHRG reports relating to children. It is reproduced here for general use.] This summary is intended for consideration by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. It has been prepared partly in response to the report filed by the State Law & Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Burma?s ruling military junta. It does not contain a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of SLORC?s report, but instead attempts to summarize some of the worst problems facing Burma?s children today and point out some of the most glaring fallacies in the SLORC report. All of the observations and quotations included here are taken from our 4 years of living among and interviewing villagers, refugees and the internally displaced. In Burma the Tatmadaw (Army) exercises absolute power of life and death over every civilian, including children. Soldiers act with complete impunity, particularly in rural areas, and are not answerable to any laws which exist on paper in Rangoon. Children are often shot on sight in free-fire zones, tortured or executed as "suspected rebels", used for forced labour, forcibly conscripted into the Army and otherwise subject to direct abuse. They also suffer from the destruction of the village environment and the economy under SLORC policies, which are leading to widespread malnutrition and the death of children, the lack of educational opportunities, and other factors which rob them of a childhood..."