Burma’s (Myanmar’s) military junta has never disclosed how many people it has conscripted. When it activated the People’s Military Service Law in February 2024, the regime said it would draft 5,000 people per batch, or about 50,000 a year, from a pool of about 13 million eligible citizens. By September 2026, it had reached Batch 28.
The Myanmar Defense and Security Institute (MDSI), a research group founded by defected officers, estimates that more than 130,000 new soldiers have been recruited since the law took effect. The national quota was raised in April to 5,000 recruits weekly.
According to sources close to the regime, only about 631 of the first batch’s 5,155 recruits had been allowed to return home two years after their training began.
The law covers men aged 18 to 35, women aged 18 to 27, and professionals up to age 45. In practice, the burden falls on the poor, because wealthy families that receive a summons can pay poorer young men to serve in their place.
In Hpa-An, the Karen State capital, authorities mainly target casual laborers, masons, shop employees, and commuters. They also target internal migrant workers who fled fighting in the Ayeyarwady, Bago, Magway, and Sagaing regions. In Taunggyi, the Shan State capital, the junta abducted 140 men in a single week in November 2024, most of them drug users who were out at night.
In Mandalay, high school students have been entered into conscription lotteries, and ward administrators have threatened to arrest parents who fail to attend. Since January 2026, the junta has been compiling lists of women aged 18 to 27 in Hsihseng Township, southern Shan State.
The MDSI documented 23 child recruits, some as young as 15, at four training camps. Human Rights Watch reported that the military abducted and forcibly recruited more than 1,000 Rohingya men and boys from Rakhine State.
