Secretary-General report on children and armed conflict, January to December 2025
Introduction
1. The present report, prepared following consultations and covering the period from January to December 2025, is submitted pursuant to Security Council resolution 2427 (2018). The report includes trends regarding the impact of armed conflict on children and information on violations committed, as requested by the Council in its resolution 1612 (2005) and subsequent resolutions.1 Where possible, violations are attributed to parties to conflict and the annexes to the present report include a list of parties engaging in violations against children, namely the recruitment and use of children, the killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence2 perpetrated against children, attacks on schools, hospitals and protected persons in relation to schools and/or hospitals, 3 and the abduction of children.
2. The information contained in the present report was vetted for accuracy by the United Nations. Where information is not verified, it is qualified as such. Incidents committed earlier but verified only in 2025 are included in the verified grave violations.
3. The information does not represent the full scale of violations against children but provides United Nations-verified trends in grave violations against children, given that access for monitors to affected areas and for victims to specialized service provision are challenges. Persistent efforts by some Member States to undermine independent human rights monitoring, along with attacks against community and civic leaders, human rights defenders and monitors of violations against children threaten the Security Council monitoring and reporting mandate on grave violations against children.
4. Pursuant to Security Council resolution 1612 (2005), my Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict adopted a pragmatic approach to promote broad and effective protection for children. Reference to a situation does not seek to make any legal determination as to whether situations which are referred to in the present report constitute armed conflicts within the context of the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocols thereto, nor does it prejudge the legal status of the non-State parties involved in these situations. Accordingly, the report documents situations in which apparent violations of international norms and standards are of such gravity as to warrant international concern, given their impact on children. My Special Representative brings these situations to the attention of Governments, which bear the primary responsibility for protecting children, in order to encourage them to take remedial measures.
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1 See also the relevant reports of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in specific country situations, in particular in Burkina Faso (S/2025/101), Mali (S/2024/883), Myanmar (S/2025/81), Somalia (S/2025/735), South Sudan (S/2025/317) and Yemen (S/2025/113), the report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict to the General Assembly (A/80/266) and the report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict to the Human Rights Council on children and armed conflict (A/HRC/61/37).
2 The term “conflict-related sexual violence” refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage, and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls and boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict.
3 For the purposes of the present report, the phrase “protected persons in relation to schools and/or hospitals”, used in Security Council resolutions 1998 (2011), 2143 (2014) and 2427 (2018), as well as in the statements by the President of the Security Council of 17 June 2013 (S/PRST/2013/8) and 31 October 2017 (S/PRST/2017/21), refers to teachers, doctors, other educational personnel, students and patients.
