Children and Armed Conflict
Expected Council Action
In late June, the Security Council will hold its annual open debate on children and armed conflict. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Vanessa Frazier is expected to present the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict, which is due in mid-June. Other speakers are likely to include Executive Director of UNICEF Catherine Russell and one or more civil society briefers.
The open debate is expected to address trends relating to the six grave violations against children. (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.) It seems that Colombia, the Council’s president in June, has chosen to focus the meeting on the protection of educational settings and on the prevention of attacks against schools.
Background and Key Recent Developments
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of General Assembly resolution 51/77 of 12 December 1996, which established the children and armed conflict mandate. The Security Council has developed a robust normative framework in support of the mandate through the adoption of 14 resolutions and 13 presidential statements to date. Among the tools established by the Council are the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM)—which collects and verifies information on grave violations committed against children—and the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict. Conclusions adopted by the Working Group, as well as the annexes in the Secretary-General’s annual report—which list parties that have committed violations against children—have helped to promote accountability and to encourage conflict parties to take steps to protect children, such as signing and implementing action plans to end and prevent grave violations.
In a 23 December 2025 report to the Human Rights Council (HRC), Frazier noted that more than 220,000 children have been released from armed forces and groups since the establishment of the children and armed conflict mandate. Additionally, conflict parties have signed over 40 action plans to end and prevent grave violations. The report details progress made in 2025 in several contexts, including the release and reintegration of children from the ranks of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the South Sudanese government’s re-issuance of military command orders to advance the implementation of the action plan it signed in 2020. Additionally, in Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) appointed a focal point to engage with the UN on the development of a new action plan.
Since her appointment on 3 October 2025 as the fifth Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Frazier has been actively engaging with relevant parties to facilitate the signing and implementation of commitments to protect children. To that end, she has travelled to Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Russia, and Haiti, as well as to Addis Ababa to discuss cooperation between her office and the African Union (AU). Frazier has also sought to increase engagement with the Security Council, including by briefing the Council on her visit to Syria during its 22 April meeting on the file.
Despite important progress in implementing the children and armed conflict agenda, there has been an increase in grave violations committed against children in the past several years, driven by the eruption of new crises and intensification of existing conflicts. The Secretary-General’s last annual report on children and armed conflict, dated 17 June 2025, documented 41,370 UN-verified grave violations in 2024, representing a 25 percent increase compared with 2023. This marked the third consecutive year in which precipitous increases in violations were recorded. The report also documented 2,374 attacks on schools and hospitals in 2024, representing a 44 percent increase compared with the previous year.
In remarks concerning humanitarian priorities for children in 2026 delivered on 22 April, Russell reported that figures in 2025 reflect similar trends, demonstrating persistently high numbers of grave violations committed against children. According to the Secretary-General’s most recent annual report on the protection of civilians (PoC), dated 7 May and covering developments in 2025, the killing and maiming of children increased last year, driven mainly by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, including in contexts such as Lebanon, Myanmar, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. Children were also harmed by explosive ordnance contamination, even in places where conflict has abated. In Syria, for instance, child casualties from mines and other explosive ordnance increased fourfold in 2025 compared with the previous year.
Decisions relating to the annexes of the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict have traditionally attracted considerable attention. On 29 May, 17 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) sent an open letter to Secretary-General António Guterres, calling on him to ensure that the criteria for listing and de-listing perpetrators in the annexes to his report are consistently applied to all parties. In an April report titled “A Credible List”, the NGO Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict provided several recommendations for the upcoming annual report, including on parties that should be listed or re-listed. It also recommended that the Secretary-General add the Israel-US conflict with Iran as a new “situation of concern” and further investigate which parties are responsible for committing grave violations in that context.
Developments in the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict
In 2025, Security Council members were unable to agree on the allocation of subsidiary body chairs until 29 May, at which point Greece was appointed as chair. With only half a year to negotiate conclusions on the Secretary-General’s country reports in 2025, the Working Group was only able to adopt conclusions on one report, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
A similar pattern has emerged in 2026, as this year’s allocation of subsidiary body chairs has yet to be agreed at the time of writing. This delay is likely to have significant repercussions for the number of conclusions that the Working Group will be able to adopt this year. The Working Group had begun negotiations on its conclusions on two reports in 2025—on Burkina Faso and Mali—but was unable to reach agreement by the end of the year. In addition, there is a backlog of three country reports that have been published and are awaiting review, namely Myanmar, Syria, and Somalia.
Key Issues and Options
The occasion of the 30th anniversary of the children and armed conflict mandate presents an opportunity to reflect both on its achievements and on ways to address the significant challenges it is facing. For instance, the Working Group’s failure in recent years to adopt conclusions in a timely manner, due to both the late allocation of subsidiary body chairs and difficult dynamics among Council members, is a matter of serious concern as it hampers the Working Group’s ability to respond to developments on the ground and to promote accountability.
Additionally, cuts by traditional donors to humanitarian funding and to the budgets of UN peace operations, as well as recent and impending drawdowns of some of these operations, have had negative effects on child protection and monitoring and reporting capacities in the field. The severe funding cuts affecting UN agencies and NGOs have also reduced critical services for children, including support for education and reintegration programmes for children formerly associated with armed forces and groups.
An option for Council members would be to hold informal exchanges with child protection actors in the field, who use the Working Group’s conclusions to advocate with relevant parties, on how best to support their work. Such discussions could address ways to make the Working Group’s conclusions more fit for purpose and to ensure that relevant Council products, such as mandate renewals of UN peace operations, incorporate language on child protection capacities.
There is also a need to increase the visibility of the children and armed conflict agenda, in order to encourage financial and political support from a cross-regional array of member states. Security Council Report’s latest research report on children and armed conflict, published on 12 June 2025, recommended convening an international conference to promote this objective. Malta, which served as Chair of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict during its 2023-2024 Council term, organised such a conference in Valletta on 5 and 6 May, with the participation of a range of member states, UN entities, and civil society organisations. Member states interested in promoting the agenda could consider organising follow-up conferences.
Threats to children’s right to education are another major area of concern. In the past year, this issue has received more attention as Council members have organised several relevant meetings, including a 24 February Arria-formula meeting convened by Panama that highlighted the role of education in preventing child recruitment and use and a 2 March Council briefing titled “Children, technology, and education in conflict” convened by the US. At the upcoming open debate in June, member states could highlight the importance of implementing relevant Council products, including resolution 2601 of 29 October 2021 on the protection of education, and call on states to ratify and implement non-UN political agreements, such as the Safe Schools Declaration. They could also encourage states to take concrete steps in this regard, including by restricting the military use of schools and ensuring accountability for attacks on education.
A new issue of concern is how to address threats posed to children by emerging technologies. The Secretary-General’s most recent PoC report notes that “[t]he use of certain technologies, including drones and the use of artificial intelligence in identifying targets, was increasingly involved in incidents affecting children” in 2025. The report also warns that armed actors are increasingly using social media to influence, abduct, extort, and recruit and use children. Council members have recently shown interest in learning more about this issue, with Greece and Panama organising an informal expert-level briefing on the use of emerging technologies in the recruitment of children in armed conflict on 14 May. During this meeting, Greece apparently announced its intention to introduce a resolution that would address the protection of children in the digital environment, among other issues.
Council Dynamics
The children and armed conflict agenda enjoys general support among Council members. However, political sensitivities have created difficulties in recent years, including with regard to the functioning of the Working Group.
In January, the US announced that it would withdraw from several international organisations and entities, including the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (OSRSG-CAAC). It is currently unclear how this will affect the US’ participation in the Working Group once it begins operating. Additionally, it seems that the US has indicated that it would oppose language on the OSRSG-CAAC in Council products, which may complicate future negotiations. US opposition to language on gender was apparently a sticking point leading to protracted negotiations on some Working Group conclusions in 2025.
The Security Council’s current composition includes three member states that are on the children and armed conflict agenda, namely Colombia, the DRC, and Somalia. This dynamic could present both challenges and opportunities, as these member states may be sensitive to being discussed in this context but could also share their experience gained from taking steps such as implementing action plans to end and prevent grave violations.
| Secretary-General’s Reports | |
| 17 June 2025S/2025/247 | This was the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict. |
