United Nations has issued one of its starkest warnings yet on the plight of children trapped in armed conflicts, revealing that government forces and their affiliated actors were responsible for more grave violations against children in 2025 than non-State armed groups for the first time since global monitoring began three decades ago.
The finding, contained in the Secretary-General’s latest report on Children and Armed Conflict, describes a deeply troubling turning point in the protection of children during war. The report verified 38,558 grave violations affecting 24,174 children in 2025, the highest number recorded since the monitoring mechanism was established in 1996.
The violations include killings, maiming, recruitment into armed groups, abductions, sexual violence, attacks on schools and hospitals, denial of humanitarian assistance and other abuses that continue to devastate the lives of children caught in conflict zones around the world.
Addressing the United Nations Security Council, Vanessa Frazier, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict noted that the latest findings should leave no room for complacency.
“After decades of evidence, warnings and appeals, the international community cannot claim ignorance of what is happening to children in armed conflict.
“If the world is still not awake, after all that millions of children have and continue to endure, it must confront a far more troubling truth.”
Vanessa Frazier
She noted that, “inaction is not the result of ignorance,” adding, “it is a conscious political choice.”
The report details the experiences of thousands of children exposed to conflict-related violence across multiple regions. Many suffered more than one grave violation, highlighting the complex and overlapping threats facing children in war zones.
Frazier further noted that “the Secretary-General’s report should shake the conscience of the Council, of Member States and of the international community.”
“It should unsettle complacency. Puncture euphemism and strip away any remaining illusion about the reality children face in armed conflict.”
Vanessa Frazier
According to the report, the 38,558 verified violations were documented through the UN Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism, a system established to collect and verify information on abuses committed against children in conflict settings.
The figures cover violations verified during 2025, including some incidents that occurred in previous years but were confirmed during the reporting period. Even with this extensive monitoring network, officials stress that the actual number of violations is likely far higher.
Conflict environments often make documentation extremely difficult due to insecurity, limited access to affected communities and fears of retaliation among survivors and witnesses.
The report therefore offers only a partial picture of the true scale of suffering experienced by children across conflict-affected regions.
Concerns Mount Over Accountability for Violations Against Children
Moreover, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stated that the findings underscore a broader erosion of protections that international law is meant to guarantee for children. “A school, hospital or waterpoint should never be a battlefield,” she added.
Yet for millions of children living amid conflict, those spaces have increasingly become sites of danger rather than safety.
Russell noted that behind every verified statistic is a child whose life has been permanently altered by violence.
“These figures show that protections for children under international law are being violated more often and at greater cost.”
Catherine Russell
Particularly alarming, she added, is the finding that government forces and affiliated actors have now overtaken non-State armed groups as the primary perpetrators of grave violations against children.
States, she stressed, bear a special responsibility to uphold international law, ensure military compliance with child protection standards and hold perpetrators accountable, adding, “we must act with the urgency and consistency this reality demands.”
Testimonies given to the Security Council demonstrated the human cost of these violations.
Plan International Haiti’s Country Director, Andre Prospery Raymond, emphasised the growing predicament that children are facing in his nation, where gang violence and insecurity have sharply increased.
According to the report, Haiti recorded 2,088 grave violations affecting 1,661 children during 2025.
Among them were 892 children recruited by armed groups, including 101 girls. “These numbers may seem staggering, but this only accounts for one country, Haiti, in one year alone,” he stated.
Moreover, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, warned that advances in military technology, including unmanned aerial systems and artificial intelligence-enabled weapons, are exposing children to new and unprecedented risks.
He described the report’s documentation of more than 12,000 grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as “appalling” and called for stronger efforts to address the root causes of conflict.
The Ambassador argued that protecting children requires more than humanitarian responses alone. It demands preventive diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution and stronger commitments to safeguarding civilian infrastructure.
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