How are children affected by armed conflict? What kinds of harm do they face? And can the protection for children offered by international law translate into reality on the ground? Engaging with these questions, in this episode Katharine and Florian speak with Lway Mownt Noon, a Myanmar human rights activist and research consultant for the Beyond Compliance Consortium, and Cécile Aptel, Professor of Practice at the Fletcher School.

Cited Documents:

Lway Mownt, Noon, Holmes, Samantha, Rush, Chris and Weigand, Florian, Between Aftershocks & Airstrikes in Myanmar – Accounts of Compounding Harm + Need, Armed Groups and International Law, July 2025.

Aptel, Cécile, Unpunished Crimes: The Special Court for Sierra Leone and Children, in The Sierra Leone Special Court and its Legacy, 2014, CUP, pp. 340-360).

Aptel, Cécile, Atrocity Crimes, Children and International Criminal Courts: Killing Childhood, Routledge, 2023.

Guest Bios:

Lway Mownt Noon is an ethnic civil society activist, a researcher focusing on identity politics and geopolitics of Myanmar and works as a research consultant for the Beyond Compliance Consortium contracted by the University of York. Noon has worked on human rights for over 18 years, with a focus on women, children, and political prisoners. Noon was born under an armed conflict and is a victim of trafficking. She also has first-hand experience of being in IDP camps, refugee camps, and being held as a political prisoner. Noon holds a degree in International Relations and a Master's degree in Development Studies. Noon acts as a watchdog to the Myanmar military, ethnic armed organisations, and people's defence forces in Myanmar.

Professor Cécile Aptel is Professor of Practice at The Fletcher School, Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and Visiting Scientist at Harvard. An internationally recognized expert in child rights, international law and justice, she has held senior leadership positions at the UN, including UNIDIR and UNICEF, the IFRC and the Geneva Academy, and helped establish major international accountability mechanisms.

The Beyond Compliance Consortium is a co-productive, socio-legal research partnership that traverses the fields of international law, conflict studies, humanitarian protection work and human rights policy, and brings together these communities of scholarship and practice with people with lived experience of conflict. It is funded by UK International Development. The second season is funded by UK International Development, while the first season was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor in human rights law and international humanitarian law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University.

Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups.