Save the Children warns that 520 million children — about one in five globally — lived in active conflict zones in 2024, a record high for the third year running. The charity verified 41,763 grave violations against children (a 30% rise from 2023), averaging 78 children harmed per day. The report links rising militarisation and minimal peace funding (under 2% of security budgets) to failures in protecting children, even as global military spending reached $2.7 trillion. More than half of violations were recorded in the occupied Palestinian territory, the DRC, Nigeria and Somalia.
Record High: Crimes Against Children in Conflict Zones Surge in 2024, NGO Warns
Save the Children warns that 520 million children — about one in five globally — lived in active conflict zones in 2024, a record high for the third year running. The charity verified 41,763 grave violations against children (a 30% rise from 2023), averaging 78 children harmed per day. The report links rising militarisation and minimal peace funding (under 2% of security budgets) to failures in protecting children, even as global military spending reached $2.7 trillion. More than half of violations were recorded in the occupied Palestinian territory, the DRC, Nigeria and Somalia.
18:32, 04.11.2025Conflict
Record High: Crimes Against Children in Conflict Zones Surge in 2024, NGO Warns
Save the Children reports that about 520 million children — roughly one in five worldwide — lived inside active conflict zones in 2024, a record high for the third consecutive year.
The charity verified 41,763 grave violations against children in 2024, a 30% increase from 2023. That amounts to an average of 78 children suffering grave violations each day, including being killed or maimed, abducted, recruited into armed groups, or subjected to sexual violence.
Children raised in heavily militarised areas frequently drop out of school, are forced from their homes, and suffer long-term physical and psychological trauma, the report warns.
Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children: “This sharp rise in grave violations shows not only greater exposure to war but also a severe erosion of the international rules and protections meant to keep children safe. The current, largely military-focused approach to security is failing to protect children from the gravest abuses.”
The report records 61 state-based conflicts in 2024 — conflicts involving at least one government — and highlights a sustained decline in investment in peace: less than 2% of global security spending went to peacebuilding and peacekeeping in 2024.
By contrast, global military expenditure rose by more than 9% to a record $2.7 trillion in 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Africa now has the largest number and share of children living in conflict zones, with 218 million children affected, surpassing the Middle East for the first time since 2007. Nevertheless, the highest number of recorded grave violations against children occurred in the occupied Palestinian territory, where one in three children killed or maimed in conflict were Palestinian.
Overall, more than half of the verified violations against children in 2024 took place in the occupied Palestinian territory, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Somalia.
Call to action: The report urges governments, international bodies and donors to increase investment in peacebuilding and child protection, strengthen enforcement of international child-protection norms, and reduce reliance on purely military solutions to protect the most vulnerable.