Child-Soldiering: A Nuanced View Through the Eyes of a Gorkha Youth in Kachin State, Myanmar

Abstract

Myanmar has more child soldiers than any other country but the literature on this subject disregards their experiences. I analyse a first-hand account of child-soldiering in 2014 in the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a non-state armed group in Kachin State, to understand motivations for associating with the armed group as well as the lived experience of being a child soldier. I critique claims made in the literature for their failure to appreciate agency and volition and positive experiences in accounts of passivity, innocence, and suffering. Most pertinently, the case study reveals ethnic heterogeneity and ethnicisation, challenging the portrayal of the KIA as an ethnic militia exclusively advocating for Kachin people, and bringing into question politicised ethnicity as the primary lens through which conflict in Myanmar is conventionally viewed. The limitations of Western child rights-based approaches in leveraging culturally sensitive analyses are also considered. This nuanced view of child-soldiering is a corrective to top-down political approaches to deciphering Myanmar’s conflict.