By Joshua Carroll

YANGON, Myanmar

A British rights group has slammed the UN’s agency for children as “irresponsible” for its public praise of Myanmar’s military following the release of 51 child soldiers.

Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK, a Myanmar-focused rights group that uses the country’s former name, told Anadolu Agency Friday that although the military has released hundreds of child soldiers in recent years, the practice of recruiting and using children has continued.

“It is astonishing and irresponsible for UNICEF to continue to praise the military for releasing child soldiers when they are violating a recent agreement with UNICEF to stop recruitment and use of child soldiers,” he said.

On Thursday, following the release of the 51 recruits, UNICEF's Bertrand Bainvel praised the Myanmar government's "commitment to ensuring its children are protected and have access to basic rights."

UNICEF has been working alongside Myanmar’s government, which replaced the military junta in 2011 and began sweeping political reforms, to secure the release of people who were recruited, often forcibly, by the military as children.

Many in President Thein Sein's reformist government, including Thein Sein himself, are generals who retired in order to join the new, nominally civilian cabinet.

A total of 646 have been discharged since 2012, when Myanmar signed a joint action plan with the UN. All of them were under the age of 18 when the agreement was signed.

But it was not the first time Myanmar had committed to ending the use of child soldiers.

“It’s now eleven years since Thein Sein first chaired a military committee which pledged to end the use of child soldiers, and there is still no end in sight,” Farmaner added.

He also criticized the United States and Britain for providing assistance to the Myanmar army, which has long been despised by many in the country and abroad for an appalling human rights record that includes the persistent use of rape as a weapon of war and the murder of civilians.

“With the Burmese military still using child soldiers, why is the British government providing training for this army, and why is the USA and Australia increasing military co-operation?”