NEW YORK, 25th June, 2026 (WAM) -- The UN Security Council met on Thursday for an open debate on strengthening protections for children caught in armed conflict. The Secretary-General's latest report reveals that in 2025, soldiers and Government forces were responsible for more grave violations against children in armed conflict than non-State armed groups, marking a first in 30 years of UN monitoring. The report verified 38,558 grave violations such as killing, recruitment and abduction, affecting 24,174 children, many of whom suffered multiple violations.

"After decades of evidence, warnings and appeals, the international community cannot claim ignorance of what is happening to children in armed conflict," said Vanessa Frazier, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

If the world is still not awake, after all that millions of children have - and continue - to endure, it must confront a far more troubling truth, she told the UN Security Council open debate on children and armed conflict on Thursday.

"Inaction is not the result of ignorance," she warned. "It is a conscious political choice" measured every day in the lives of children.

The Secretary-General's report should shake the conscience of the Council, of Member States and of the international community.

"It should unsettle complacency," she argued. "Puncture euphemism and strip away any remaining illusion about the reality children face in armed conflict."

She described the report as "an indictment of inaction" - and a call to use the tools already available to protect children.

As evidence, she highlighted the work of the UN Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism, which verified 38,558 grave violations against children, affecting 24,174 children, in a process undertaken in 2025, which includes violations in previous years.

"This is the highest verified number of children affected by violations in any year since the establishment of the Children and Armed Conflict mandate," she said.

''Attacks on schools and hospitals continued at alarming levels, endangering lives in the immediate term, but also having lasting consequences, disrupting learning, denying medical care, depriving children of access to safe spaces, and undermining the resilience and recovery of entire communities,'' she added.

She called on all parties to conflict to immediately cease all grave violations against children and fully comply with the Geneva Conventions of 1949, their additional protocols, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its optional protocols, and the principles of international law, including customary international law.

''All parties must guarantee safe, rapid, and unimpeded humanitarian access and protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and essential services and erpetrators must be held accountable, whether through national justice systems or in cooperation with international mechanisms.''

Child protection, she emphasised, must be integrated across all peace, political and security processes, from mediation to transitional justice, from disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration to security sector reform, from humanitarian response to post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding.