UN Security Council marks child-protection anniversary amid record verified violations

Greece convened the Security Council on 26 October for a debate it had planned earlier that month, marking 30 years of the UN mandate on children and armed conflict. UN officials urged stronger protection as they revisited figures showing the highest number of children affected by verified grave violations since the mandate began.

Vanessa Frazier, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said monitors verified 38,558 grave violations affecting 24,174 children in 2025. The first figure counts violations; the second counts children, not deaths. The figures had already been presented to the Council in June, when Frazier explained that the cases verified in 2025 included violations committed in earlier years. UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said the totals covered only cases the UN could verify.

Frazier said government forces were responsible for the majority of verified grave violations for the first time in the mandate’s history. She also pointed to gains: more than 40 action plans agreed with parties to conflicts had contributed to the release of more than 220,000 children from armed forces and groups. Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the UN report of omitting abuses by Ukrainian forces; his objection did not provide a competing total for the verified cases.

Russell urged governments to sustain child-protection work as funding falls. In South Sudan, more than a third of UNICEF-supported safe spaces for women and children closed in 2025 because of funding cuts, she said — a concrete loss of support as the Council considered how to make its commitments effective.