Child casualties continue to be recorded before, during and after Myanmar’s 2025 – 2026 military-led election, according to Myanmar Witness’s investigation. Between 28 September and 25 April 2026, Myanmar Witness has identified 96 incidents involving children, amounting to 214 child casualties in total.
WARNING: This report contains graphic information and imagery. While efforts have been made to blur details, the report includes information which some readers may find distressing.
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The investigation examined whether patterns of child casualties changed across the pre-election, election and post-election periods and assessed the types of attacks, locations, reported actors and publicly available responses associated with these incidents. Several incidents involved more than one child; therefore, the total number of casualties is higher than the number of incidents recorded.
Across the dataset, 129 child injuries and 85 child deaths were reported. Of these, 48 (29 injuries and 19 deaths) were independently verified using available visual evidence. Verification varied across incidents due to differences in the availability and quality of publicly available information.
Based on Myanmar Witness’s investigation, the key findings indicate:
- The Myanmar Air Force (MAF) was the most frequently reported actor associated with recorded child casualty incidents, accounting for 61 reported actor attributions (61%). Most incidents attributed to the MAF involved airstrikes, which were the most frequently recorded incident type and were associated with the highest number of reported child injuries and deaths.
- Child casualties were recorded across all three reporting periods, including during the election period, despite it covering a substantially shorter time frame than the pre-election and post-election periods.
- Residential locations, including houses, villages and surrounding areas, were the locations most frequently associated with documented child casualty incidents. Educational facilities and religious buildings were also repeatedly identified.
- Myanmar Witness identified only two publicly available responses from pro-military media and social media sources relating to recorded child casualty incidents. No official public response from the Myanmar military acknowledging the reported child casualties was identified.
- Of the 96 recorded incidents, 38 were geolocated, 31 were chronolocated, and 24 were verified through both geolocation and chronolocation, while the remaining incidents could not be fully verified due to limitations in available open-source information.
Taken together, these findings indicate that children continued to face reported risks in conflict-affected civilian areas throughout the reporting period. The predominance of reported MAF-attributed airstrikes, together with the continued recording of child casualties in homes, educational facilities and religious buildings, highlights the ongoing risks faced by children in locations where civilians live, go to school and worship.
Download the report to read the investigation in full.