Children and Armed Conflict
Expected Council Action
In late June, the Security Council will hold its annual open debate on children and armed conflict. Vindhya Persaud, Guyana’s Minister of Human Services and Social Security, is expected to chair the meeting. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba is expected to present the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict, which is expected in mid-June. Other speakers are likely to include Executive Director of UNICEF Catherine Russell and a civil society briefer.
The open debate is expected to cover trends relating to the six grave violations against children, with a focus on violations that had a high incidence in the past year. (The six grave violations, as determined by the Security Council, are child recruitment and use; killing and maiming; rape and other forms of sexual violence; attacks on schools and hospitals; abductions; and the denial of humanitarian access.) In this regard, it seems that the meeting will focus on the killing and maiming of children, including the effects of the use of explosive weapons, as well as rape and other forms of sexual violence against children.
Key Recent Developments
This year marks 20 years since the Security Council adopted landmark resolution 1612 of 26 July 2005, which established the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) and the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. The resolution was a milestone in the development of the architecture of the children and armed conflict agenda, which is viewed as one of the Council’s most developed thematic issues. The conclusions adopted by the working group and the annexes in the Secretary-General’s report, which list parties that have committed violations against children, have helped promote accountability and encourage conflict parties to take concrete steps, such as signing and implementing action plans to end and prevent violations against children.
In her 26 July 2024 report to the General Assembly, Gamba noted that more than 200,000 children have been separated from armed forces and groups since 1999 through dialogue and advocacy efforts by the UN. Additionally, 43 action plans have been signed by conflict parties, with 22 currently being implemented. Most recently, in June 2024, the Syrian National Army (SNA), a coalition of armed groups operating in Syria, signed an action plan to end and prevent the recruitment and use and killing and maiming of children.
Despite this important progress, there have been worrying trends of grave violations committed against children in the past several years, driven by the eruption and intensification of conflicts in places like Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, and Ukraine. Last year’s annual Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict, dated 3 June 2024, documented 32,990 UN-verified grave violations, representing the highest number of violations recorded since the MRM’s establishment.
These trends appear to have worsened in the past year. In a 28 December 2024 statement, UNICEF said that the effects of conflict on children reached “devastating and likely record levels” in 2024, noting that over 473 million children—more than one in six globally—live in conflict-affected areas. The statement added that the UN verified more child casualties in the first nine months of 2024 than during all of 2023, meaning that this year’s upcoming annual report is likely to document an increase in violations. In her 8 January annual report to the Human Rights Council (HRC), Gamba noted that the UN verified over 18,000 grave violations against children in the first half of 2024 alone. She added that the period witnessed children being killed and maimed “in unprecedented numbers” in Burkina Faso, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Ukraine.
Decisions relating to the annexes to the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict have traditionally attracted considerable attention. On 29 May, 20 civil society organisations sent an open letter to Secretary-General António Guterres, calling on him to publish a full list of perpetrators that is “evidence-based and accurately reflects data collected and verified” by the MRM. In an April report titled “A Credible List”, the organisation Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict provides several recommendations for the upcoming annual report, including to list two parties in the Central African Republic (CAR) for rape and other forms of sexual violence: government and pro-government forces, including the Central African Armed Forces (FACA), and the Retour, Réclamation et Réhabilitation (3R) armed group. The report also recommended listing the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and related state security forces for killing and maiming and the Defence and Security Forces of Burkina Faso for killing and maiming.
Developments in the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict
In an unprecedented development, in 2025, Security Council members were unable to agree on the allocation of subsidiary body chairs more than five months into the year. This has prevented the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, like the rest of the Council’s subsidiary bodies, from beginning its work to date. (For more information, see the In Hindsight, titled “Impact of a Delay in Subsidiary Body Chairs Appointments”, in our May 2025 Monthly Forecast.) The allocation was agreed on 28 May, but the Note by the President setting out the subsidiary bodies for 2025 had yet to be issued at the time of writing. According to the agreed allocation, Greece will chair the working group in 2025-2026, with Panama serving as its vice chair.
This delay is likely to have significant repercussions in terms of the number of conclusions the group is likely to be able to adopt this year. Currently, there is a backlog of five country reports that have been published and are awaiting review, namely Burkina Faso, the DRC, Mali, Myanmar, and Yemen.
Key Issues and Options
A key issue for the Council is to ensure the effectiveness of the tools that support the implementation of the children and armed conflict agenda. In the past several years, difficult dynamics in the working group have caused significant delays in the adoption of its conclusions, which require consensus. It has also on occasion in recent years failed to adopt conclusions on a number of Secretary-General’s reports.
Against this backdrop, the upcoming open debate can serve as an opportunity for reflecting on the implementation of the children and armed conflict agenda over the last 20 years. Members can use the meeting to highlight progress made as well as the challenges and propose ways to address the issues that have been hindering the ability of the Council to fully utilise the agenda’s tools. For instance, they can discuss ways to make the conclusions of the working group more succinct and fit for purpose. They may suggest a review of the “toolkit”, adopted by the working group in 2006, which provides options for possible actions by the working group. The working group has not seriously reviewed or amended this non-paper since its publication almost 20 years ago.
An issue for the Council is how to address the deleterious and disproportionate effects on children of the use of explosive ordnance—such as explosive weapons and remnants of war (ERWs), improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and landmines—including in populated areas. In an April 2024 policy note, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict emphasised that children have distinct vulnerabilities to explosive weapons, including the specific impact of blast injuries on children’s bodies. Such weapons also often damage or destroy civilian infrastructure critical to children’s survival and well-being, such as schools, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, and electrical infrastructure. The use of such weapons was the main cause of cases of killing and maiming of children documented in the Secretary-General’s 2024 annual report on children and armed conflict. In that report, the Secretary-General encouraged member states to endorse the 2022 Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (EWIPA). Member states can use the upcoming open debate to echo this call. Council members may also seek more synergies between children and armed conflict and the broader protection of civilians (PoC) agenda, which frequently addresses the issue of EWIPA. An option would be for the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict and the Informal Expert Group (IEG) on PoC to convene a joint expert briefing on the matter.
The prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence against children is another major concern. This violation is often underreported, owing to such factors as stigmatisation, fear of reprisals, and lack of access to services. The Secretary-General’s latest annual PoC report, dated 15 May, noted that, in 2024, the UN verified a significant increase in sexual violence against children in the DRC, Nigeria, and Somalia. Overall, the UN verified approximately 4,500 cases of sexual violence in 2024, with women and girls representing 93 percent of the victims. The report describes initiatives to address the issue, including the establishment by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) of patrols to strengthen the prevention and deterrence of conflict-related sexual violence. An option for Council members is to consider mandating other relevant UN operations to undertake such efforts. They can also take steps to further implement resolution 2467 of 23 April 2019 on sexual violence in conflict, which included references to information sharing by the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict with relevant sanctions committees. Members could also request the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict to provide joint briefings to relevant sanctions committees and the working group.
Council Dynamics
The children and armed conflict agenda enjoys broad general support among Council members. However, political sensitivities in the Council are evident at the subsidiary body level, resulting in protracted negotiations before consensus can be reached on some conclusions in the working group.
Given the delay in appointing subsidiary body chairs in 2025, the new chair, Greece, will have to make up for lost time in addressing five country reports, which will require fostering trust and cooperation among a new cohort of working group members. As this subsidiary body had yet to begin working at the time of writing, it is too early to assess dynamics within the working group, not least since Somalia is on the children and armed conflict agenda and Pakistan is a situation of concern. In last year’s annual report, the Secretary-General welcomed Pakistan’s engagement with his special representative to develop concrete measures to protect children, noting that such engagement “may lead to the removal of Pakistan as a situation of concern from my next report, should all agreed practical measures be fully implemented”.
| Security Council Resolutions | |
| 26 July 2005S/RES/1612 | This resolution set up the Council’s Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict and highlighted the link between illicit trafficking in small arms and the use of child soldiers. |
| Secretary-General’s Reports | |
| 3 June 2024S/2024/384 | This was the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict. |
