Arria-formula Meeting on “Safe Education to Prevent the Recruitment and Use of Children in Armed Conflict”*
Tomorrow (24 February)*, Panama will convene an Arria-formula meeting titled “Red Hand Day 2026: Safe Education to Prevent the Recruitment and Use of Children in Armed Conflict”. The meeting is being co-organised by Greece and Liberia, together with non-Council members Austria, Japan, and Uruguay. The anticipated briefers are Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Vanessa Frazier; UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell; the Director of the Liaison Office in New York of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Eliot Minchenberg; and the Haiti Operations Director at Save the Children, Johnny Cesar Etienne.
The meeting, which will begin at 10 am EST and take place in Conference Room 4, will be broadcast on UNTV.
The concept note prepared by the co-organisers says that the meeting is being held in connection with Red Hand Day, which aims to raise awareness of the need to strengthen efforts to end the recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts. This international day, which has been held annually on 12 February since 2002, marks the entry into force of the Optional Protocol of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that prohibits the recruitment and use of persons under 18 years of age. Among the objectives of the meeting is to discuss how safe, inclusive, and continuous education can contribute to preventing the recruitment of children and support their sustainable reintegration, thereby reducing the risk of re-recruitment. It also aims to examine concrete measures to safeguard schools, students, and teachers from violence.
Several questions are posed in the concept note to help guide the discussion, including:
- How do attacks on education and school insecurity amplify vulnerabilities and push children into higher-risk environments?
- Which educational interventions and best practices have shown the greatest impact in reducing recruitment risk and preventing re-recruitment, including in displacement contexts?
- How can teachers and educators best support the process of reintegration of children formerly associated with armed forces or groups and what tools and differentiated approaches—such as gender-sensitive and disability-inclusive programmes, responses in urban and digital environments, and responses in displacement contexts—do they require for doing so?
Recruitment and use of children as well as attacks against schools and hospitals are two of the six grave violations included in the UN-led Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) for violations against children established by resolution 1612 in 2005. (The remaining four grave violations are killing and maiming; abductions; rape and other forms of sexual violence; and the denial of humanitarian access.) The Security Council, through the respective adoption of resolution 1379 of 20 November 2001 and resolution 1998 of 12 July 2011, designated recruitment and use of children and attacks on schools and hospitals as grave violations that could trigger a listing of parties in the annexes of the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict. In 2014, the Council adopted resolution 2143, which urged parties to conflict to respect the civilian character of schools and encouraged member states to consider measures to deter the use of schools by armed forces and non-state armed groups, among other things. More recently, the Security Council adopted resolution 2601 of 29 October 2021 on the protection of education, which included an emphasis on the need to facilitate the continuation of education in situations of armed conflict.
The briefers at the meeting may note that, despite the adoption of these resolutions, global threats to education continue to grow at an alarming rate. According to UNICEF, between 2015 and 2025, the MRM has verified over 14,000 attacks on schools and 3,241 instances of military use of schools in the situations covered by the Security Council’s children and armed conflict agenda. The Secretary-General’s most recent annual report on children and armed conflict, dated 17 June 2025, recorded 2,374 attacks on schools and hospitals in 2024, representing a 44 percent increase compared with the previous year. The briefers may also emphasise the risks associated with children being out of school in armed conflict contexts, including their vulnerability to exploitation, sexual violence and forced recruitment into armed groups.
Frazier is expected to highlight that education is an important component in the reintegration of children released from armed forces or armed groups. In this regard, she may stress the importance of providing teachers with specific tools that will allow them to address the diverse needs of released children, such as the guidance note on the matter released by her office and UNESCO in 2025. She is likely to call on member states to adhere to relevant Security Council resolutions as well as to endorse and implement non-UN normative frameworks, such as the 2007 Paris Principles on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups and the Safe Schools Declaration (SSD). (The SSD is a voluntary political commitment from governments not to use schools for military purposes and to protect them during military operations, which was developed by Argentina and Norway and opened for endorsement in 2015.)
Russell may underscore the importance of the continuation of education in armed conflict situations, including by implementing inclusive remote or accelerated learning modalities. She is likely to note that schools provide children with a crucial safe space and help restore a sense of normality and peer support during difficult times. Russell might also emphasise that schools can serve as a lifeline for children in situations of armed conflict by equipping them with information about the risks of explosive ordnance and providing them with psychosocial services.
Minchenberg may explain how quality education—an issue on which UNESCO leads as part of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4—can help prevent children from being susceptible to recruitment, including by building their soft skills and supporting critical thinking. He might also emphasise that the right to education should not end at 18, extending to tertiary education. Minchenberg is also likely to further note that in situations where there is a disruption of education, students lose the recognition of their prior learning, qualifications, and credentials. UNESCO has developed tools to address the issue, such as its Qualifications Passport and the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education.
Etienne will provide examples from his work in Haiti, where between 30 and 50 percent of armed groups have children within their ranks and cases of recruitment and use of children have grown by an estimated 200 percent in 2025. He may emphasise that recruitment is rife when children are food insecure, out of school, or displaced. In this regard, Etienne might underscore that education is essential for child protection in Haiti, noting that safe schools provide a sense of normality and a consistent entry point where humanitarians can deliver support to children, including food assistance. In light of the expected full deployment of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), he might underscore that the force should be prepared to encounter children who have been recruited into armed groups, and should treat them primarily as victims of grave violations.
Several Council members are also expected to highlight the role of education in the prevention of grave violations against children and their protection, as well as in the promotion of peace. Some members may emphasise that education needs to be safe, cautioning that in some contexts schools can also be misused by actors as spaces for recruitment, for instance through abductions of children while in schools or on the way to school.
Council members are likely to condemn attacks against schools and their military use, while calling for compliance with Security Council resolutions and international humanitarian law, which prohibits attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure. Some speakers might call for the provision of sustainable funding for education and for initiatives that can facilitate safer environments around schools, such as de-mining.
While some Council members are likely to call on member states to endorse and implement the SSD, including by developing action plans to that end, others are not expected to do so. As at 2026, 123 member states had endorsed the declaration. Several Council members—including China and Russia—have not endorsed it and have usually opposed including references to the declaration in Council products.
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*Post-script (22 February, 8:44 pm EST): The meeting was originally scheduled to take place on Monday (23 February). After the story’s publication, the meeting was postponed due to severe weather conditions in New York that led to the closure of the UN headquarters on 23 February. At the time of writing, a new date for the meeting had yet to be set.
**Post-script (23 February, 11:15 am EST): The meeting has been rescheduled to 24 February at 10 am EST. The story has been modified to reflect the change in date.
