Businesses in Myanmar - be aware of your impact on children's rights

Far too many businesses in Myanmar do not realise how profoundly they affect children's rights, not only when employing children, but also through their products, marketing practices and security arrangements. To change this, the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB), founded by the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Institute for Human Rights and Business in 2013, has launched a Briefing Paper on ‘Children Rights and Business in Myanmar’.

The paper focusses on the role of business in respecting and supporting children’s rights and aims to provide guidance to foreign and Myanmar companies on what children’s rights mean in the context of doing business in Myanmar. The paper provides companies in Myanmar with concrete recommendations on how they can respect and support children’s rights.

"Businesses operating in Myanmar should look beyond child labour as the only way they can impact children’s rights’. Companies in the food and beverage sector should look at the marketing practices of their unhealthy products, extractives companies should look at how their security arrangements affect children and tourism businesses should be aware how visits to monastic schools and orphanages could negatively affect children", says Tulika Bansal, Senior Adviser, DIHR and co-author of the report.

In compiling the recommendations in the paper, MCRB held a consultation attended by foreign and Myanmar businesses, child rights experts, NGOs working with children, and UN agencies. The paper is accompanied by a list of relevant ‘linked initiatives’ concerning children’s rights and business which are being undertaken by other organisations in Myanmar.

Launching the paper, Vicky Bowman, Director, MCRB, said: "In our experience, businesses in Myanmar rarely ask themselves what impacts they have on children, even though 24% of Myanmar’s population is under 18. We see occasional public discussion of illegal child labour, particularly in garment factories, although it is just as prevalent in teashops, orchards, artisanal mines and several other sectors. But there are many other ways that business should think about whether they are respecting the rights of children. Children are consumers, community members, workers – including in the value chain - and family members of workers".

The Briefing Paper uses the framework of the ten Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP), developed by UNICEF, the UN Global Compact and Save the Children and has put these into a Myanmar context, including an analysis of relevant Myanmar laws as well as international standards.