Myanmar’s Conscription Crisis: How Quotas Fuelled a Black Market for Human Trafficking
Myanmar’s military junta is aggressively enforcing mandatory conscription quotas, leading to widespread abductions and a black market where local officials sell young men to the army. Since 2024, an estimated 100,000 recruits have been forcibly conscripted, often through coercion rather than legal process. Wealthier individuals can pay to avoid service, leaving the poor to bear the burden. This desperation stems from the junta’s manpower shortages in the ongoing civil war, which has intensified since the 2021 coup. The practice has been described by experts as a form of modern-day slavery, with missing-person reports rising sharply since the conscription law’s enactment.
