UN reports record violations of children in conflict, with government forces the main perpetrators

The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building, Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

UNITED NATIONS — Nearly 25,000 children caught in conflict were victims of a record number of violations last year, including killings, rape and recruitment to fight, and for the first time, government forces — not armed groups — were the main perpetrators, a new United Nations report says.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ annual report, released this week, has a blacklist of violators against children: government forces from eight nations and 67 armed groups from 16 countries and territories.

The number of violations — which also include abductions, attacks on schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access to help them — rose for a fourth straight year to 38,558, according to the report that is based on verified UN data. It said 24,174 children, a third of them girls, were affected, with several thousand subjected to multiple violations.

“The scale and persistence of these violations demand more than acknowledgment — they demand resolve,” the UN special representative for children in armed conflict, Vanessa Frazier, said in an analysis of the report.

She urged the 193 UN member nations to confront the findings and “recognize that protecting children is not an aspiration but an obligation, and that the decisions taken today will shape the futures they may or may not live to claim.”

For the first time since the UN authorized monitoring of abuses against children in conflict 30 years ago, the report said that “government forces were responsible for a majority of grave violations.”

Topping the 2025 list are the Israeli military and its security forces, with 12,445 violations. That is followed by Congo, with 4,114 violations, and Myanmar, Somalia and armed groups in Nigeria, all with over 2,000 violations. Government forces from Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine are also on the blacklist.

The blacklist also includes Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which carried out the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attacks in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked the war in Gaza. The UN says Israeli settlers were responsible for 326 grave violations last year, and Guterres warned that if these attacks continue, the settlers could be put on the blacklist.

The report says government forces were “the main perpetrators” of 6,266 killings of children — a 34 per cent increase from last year — as well as 7,958 injuries.

The UN said it verified the killing of 2,668 Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza and 55 Palestinian kids in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The UN received reports of the killing of an additional 4,588 children in Gaza and injuries to 346 Israeli children that it is in the process of verifying, the report said.

Guterres said he was “appalled by the magnitude of grave violations against children” in Palestinian territories and Israel, “gravely alarmed by the staggering increase in grave violations” perpetrated by Israeli forces, and “deeply alarmed at the staggering rise in attacks carried out by Israeli settlers” affecting children with no accountability.

The UN chief urged Israel to develop and sign a plan with the United Nations to end the killing and maiming of children and attacks on schools and hospitals with time-bound commitments.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon accused Guterres of blurring “the fundamental distinction between a democratic state fighting for its survival and murderous terrorist organizations” like Hamas and Islamic Jihad rather than standing with the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He said this will be Guterres’ legacy — “one of the greatest moral failures in the history of the United Nations.”

Frazier, the special representative for children in conflict, told reporters Thursday that there are a number of reasons government forces were responsible for more violations this year. That includes “the impunity that we are seeing towards international law” and changes in warfare from battlefields to densely populated places using new weapons like drones and explosives that cover a wide area, she said.

“Children were impacted while escaping fighting, seeking food, water or medical care, and navigating areas heavily contaminated by explosive remnants of war, often contributing to life-long disabilities,” she said in the analysis of the report.

The UN said it verified the recruitment and use of 6,607 children in conflict, with the highest numbers in Congo, Nigeria, Haiti, Somalia and Colombia. It said 5,129 youngsters were abducted, mainly in Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, Myanmar and Mozambique.

And it reported 1,783 child victims of rape and sexual violence, with the highest number in Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Haiti.

Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press