UN Report: Record Grave Violations Against Children — Government Forces Now Main Perpetrators

Nearly 25,000 children caught up in armed conflicts were victims of a record number of verified grave violations last year — including killings, rape, abduction and forced recruitment — and, for the first time since U.N. monitoring began, government forces rather than armed groups were the primary perpetrators, a new United Nations report finds.

Key Findings

Scope: The U.N. Secretary-General’s annual report documents 38,558 verified grave violations affecting 24,174 children, about one-third of whom were girls. Several thousand children suffered multiple violations.

Perpetrators: Government forces from eight countries and 67 armed groups across 16 countries and territories appear on the report’s blacklist. For the first time in 30 years of systematic monitoring, government forces were responsible for the majority of violations.

Highest Listed Actors: The Israeli military and related security forces are listed with 12,445 violations, the highest number on the blacklist, followed by government forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (4,114). Myanmar, Somalia and armed groups in Nigeria each recorded more than 2,000 violations. Government forces from Sudan, South Sudan and Syria, and Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine, are also named. The report also lists Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and records settler attacks attributed to Israeli settlers.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference at the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)(AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Human Toll

The report attributes 6,266 child killings to government forces (a 34% increase from the previous year) and documents 7,958 child injuries. The U.N. verified the killing of 2,668 Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza and 55 Palestinian children in the West Bank and east Jerusalem; additional reports of 4,588 child deaths in Gaza are being processed for verification. The U.N. is also verifying reports of 346 injured Israeli children.

Other Violations: The U.N. verified the recruitment and use of 6,607 children (highest numbers in Congo, Nigeria, Haiti, Somalia and Colombia), 5,129 child abductions (mainly in Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, Myanmar and Mozambique), and 1,783 child victims of rape and other sexual violence (with the highest numbers in Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Haiti).

“The scale and persistence of these violations demand more than acknowledgment — they demand resolve,” Vanessa Frazier, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, said in analysis accompanying the report. She urged member states to treat protecting children as an obligation, not an aspiration.

Calls To Action

U.N. leaders urged immediate, time-bound commitments from parties to conflict to stop attacks on children, schools and hospitals and to ensure accountability. Secretary-General António Guterres called for concrete, monitored plans to halt the killing and maiming of children and protect essential services and humanitarian access.

The report stresses persistent impunity, the shift of warfare into densely populated areas, and the use of wide-area weapons (including drones and explosives) as drivers of rising harm to children. It calls on all U.N. member states and armed actors to implement protective measures and accept independent monitoring and accountability mechanisms.

Note: This article summarizes verified U.N. figures and does not reflect allegations that remain under verification by U.N. bodies. The U.N. continues to process and verify additional reports.