The Burma (Myanmar) military junta activated its conscription law on February 10, 2024, requiring men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 to serve in the military. Professionals, including doctors, engineers, and technical specialists, can be conscripted up to age 45 for men and 35 for women.
Those conscripted are required to serve a minimum of three years. This includes educated adults with engineering, medical, and technical skills, further draining Burma’s already collapsing education and professional sectors.
Conscription means serving a junta that seized power in 2021 by overthrowing the elected government and arresting pro-democracy leaders. It also means being forced into a civil war in which as much as 80 percent of the population opposes military rule.
For ethnic minorities, who make up roughly 40 percent of the population, conscription is especially devastating. It means being ordered to participate in widespread atrocities, including murder, rape, and the burning of villages, directed against their own families and communities.
The International Labour Organization estimates hundreds of thousands have fled Burma to escape conscription since February 2024. Fear of being drafted drove so many young men to flee to Thailand in 2024 that they set a record for the highest annual number of undocumented Burma migrants to arrive in Thailand. The International Organization for Migration estimates over 4 million Burma migrants live in Thailand, about half of whom are undocumented. In addition to the personal hardship, they face as undocumented aliens in Thailand, separated from their families, the conscription law is decimating Burma’s education system.
At the beginning of the revolution, thousands of students walked away from junta-run universities and schools as part of the civil disobedience movement. Many shifted to alternative education options, including community-run higher education institutions in ethnic minority areas and online programs. The conscription law, however, made it unsafe for them to remain in Burma while completing these programs.
As a result, the Thailand Education Fair held in April 2024 saw overwhelming attendance, and the November 2024 fair was extended to two days as attendance doubled. Students whose families can afford it, or who secure scholarships, are fleeing to study at Thai universities. As Burma’s economy collapses, however, this option has become increasingly out of reach. Annual tuition of roughly $3,000 represents about two years’ salary for Burmese families fortunate enough to still have employment.
The law has exacerbated a brain drain that was already causing young people to leave Burma, impacting education and the labor market.
The United States Agency for International Development funding freeze suspended the Development and Inclusive Scholarship Program, affecting more than 400 Burma students pursuing degrees in the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Inside Burma, parents are pulling children out of school and sending them to neighboring countries to look for work, driven by fear of conscription. Both inside Burma and across the region, child labor violations involving children aged 12 to 16 have increased as youth fleeing the country or joining resistance forces have created labor shortages.
The crisis extends beyond students. Teachers and professors have either fled to the jungle to join the resistance or escaped the country altogether in search of work. As a result, educated adults and former professionals now find themselves in Thailand and other countries working as day laborers alongside young people who fled before finishing university, or in many cases, even high school.
Hellbound and Down 