"With scores of children killed and maimed each year in Myanmar’s long-running ethnic wars, and hundreds conscripted as laborers, the government is setting up a national complaint mechanism for reporting violence and sexual crimes against minors in regions under conflict, officials said. Myanmar, whose military has been at war with ethnic armies fighting for autonomy since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948, has struggled to shed a reputation for use of child soldiers. It signed an action plan with the U.N. in 2012 to prevent the recruitment and use of children as soldiers. In 2019, Myanmar’s Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement set up a Committee on the Prevention of Grave Violations against Children in Armed Conflict and enacted a Child Rights Law to align its national policies and regulations with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The committee submitted a national action plan for protecting children in armed conflicts from injury, death and sexual violence to President Win Myint's office on June 3, said Win Naing Tun, director-general of the ministry’s Rehabilitation Department. “We are waiting for approval,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service. “If it is approved, we will start accepting complaints. Then, we will make assessments along with relevant organizations.” Win Myat Aye, Myanmar’s minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, will oversee the process, which will include officials from the home affairs and defense services ministries who will take action against perpetrators of violence against children, Win Naing Tun said. They also will work with U.N. groups or the Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting (CTFMR), co-chaired by UNICEF and the highest U.N. representative in-country, on the implementation phase and awareness-raising campaigns, he added. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Myanmar ratified in 1991, prohibits all forms of violence against children under the age of 18. It also criminalizes grave violations against children and grants them legal protections..."