There is a poignancy to the celebration of Mother’s Day; a day whose creation is attributed to Anna Jarvis when she sent 500 white carnations to a church in her hometown in memory of her mother, Ann Jarvis.

Anna’s inspiration drew from her mother’s wish that there would emerge a day commemorating mothers for the “matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life.”[2] It was through the proclamation signed by then United States President Woodrow Wilson that Mother’s Day as we know it in North America came into being.

Ann Jarvis bore 13 children of which only 4 survived to adulthood – a common, albeit tragic reality of life in the early 19^th and 20^th centuries in the Appalachian region[3] of the United States where she called home. That the joy that children bring to mothers is without compare, so too is the immeasurable grief that comes with the loss of one’s child, be it to disease, acts of fate, or as we see too commonly around us, conflict and war.

International humanitarian law and the laws of war have distinguished between civilians and combatants for over 150 years. For over a century, normative law assumed that children, defined as anyone under 18, were civilians; however, since the late 1980s, international law specifically recognized and sought to protect a child’s vulnerability in both war and peace. Examples of these key international legal instruments include: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990), the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention 182 (2000), and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2002). It should also be noted that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also includes the prohibition of conscription and enlisting of children under its definition of war crimes.

In 1996, the United Nations (UN) created the Children and Armed Conflict mandate to strengthen the protection of children in situations of armed conflict and recommended the appointment of a Special Representative to the Secretary‐General (SRSG) to lead the UN’s advocacy efforts on preventing grave violations against children and their rights in armed conflict (A/RES/51/77).

The first resolution on children and armed conflict in 1999 identified six grave violations that affect children the most in times of war and these include:

• killing and maiming of children;
• recruitment or use of children in armed forces or armed groups; 
• attacks on schools or hospitals;
• rape or other grave sexual violence against children;
• abduction of children; and
• denial of humanitarian assistance for children. (UNICEF 2022)

Each year, the UN Secretary‐General releases an Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict that compiles the data gathered by the UN Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism[4] on these grave violations. Within this report, states and non‐state actors who violate one of the six grave violations against children are listed for these violations and can be subjected to sanctions by the UN Security Council. 

As a result of the efforts by the Office of the UN SRSG for Children and Armed Conflict, UN member states and non‐governmental agencies have lobbied to complement UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1612 with further amplification of efforts to address the six grave violations. Two examples are the Safe Schools Declaration (2015) and the Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers (2017). 

The impacts of armed conflict on children are multi‐pronged and have long‐term consequences beyond the duration of the armed conflict. When children are exposed to armed conflict, denied humanitarian access, displaced from their homes and families and unable to attain education, the ramifications impact the individual child and, at the same time, impact the development of communities and economic growth while perpetuating cycles of insecurity and violence. 

There is an urgent need to advance our understanding of the fragile contexts that threaten children, increase their vulnerability to extreme violence and insecurity, and diminish their agency to positively impact global peace and security. As a direct consequence of armed conflict, children are subjected to forced displacement, food insecurity, lack of access to quality education and healthcare, high unemployment rates and direct violence that cause long‐term physical and psychological harm and effectively deny childhood. The case studies highlighted below illustrate current examples of such unique impacts on children in armed conflicts.

In June 2023, the UN Secretary‐General expressed deep concerns about the number of children killed and maimed by Israeli forces during hostilities. The use of live ammunition during law enforcement operations, where children are often present, has always been deeply concerning. This points to longstanding concerns regarding violations of the rights of children in Gaza. The Israeli military response following the October 7^th Hamas attacks – which resulted in the killing of 1,200 Israelis[5], including 38 children, and the abduction of 42 other children from Israel into the Gaza Strip[6] – has only exacerbated an already grave situation. As James Elder from UNICEF stated two months into the current war, “In my twenty years with UNICEF, traveling from one humanitarian crisis to the next – from famines to floods and war zones to refugee camps – I’ve simply never seen such devastation and despair as is happening in Gaza.”[7]

All parties to this conflict must uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure that civilians, including children, are not targeted during hostilities and that all necessary precautions are taken to protect them. In early April 2024, Save the Children reported that some 26,000 children – over 2% of Gaza’s total child population – have been killed or injured since an attack on Israel on October 7^th and the assault on Gaza that has followed.[8] As a direct consequence of the war, many children have been orphaned and are now living alone and fending for themselves and others,[9] and UNICEF reports that at least 53 of Gaza’s 563 school buildings have been destroyed. Nearly 90% of schools have been damaged.[10]

The most current war in Sudan began April 15, 2023. The widespread malnutrition, the world’s largest child displacement crisis and a shattered health system threaten to kill far more children than the armed conflict itself. The numbers speak for themselves. According to an April 2024 statement put out by UNICEF,[11] a staggering half of Sudan’s population, some 25 million people, now require life‐saving humanitarian assistance. This figure includes a heartbreaking 8.6 million people displaced from their homes, both internally and across borders, with four million of them being children. The ongoing violence has also claimed a devastating human cost, with over 14,000 innocent lives lost. Thousands have been killed and injured, and countless more are exposed to grave protection violations, including sexual violence and recruitment into conflict.

With most schools shuttered or struggling to reopen across the country, a staggering 19 million school‐age children risk losing out on their education in violation of the Convention for the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural rights, as well as every state constitution. James Elder, UNICEF Spokesperson, reported, “The world’s largest displacement of children has been seen in Sudan. Four million children have been displaced. That’s 13,000 children every single day for 300 days.”[12] This is unprecedented and too often, in the competing landscape of tragedies, overlooked in the international agenda.

After over a half century of war, the existence of the Total Peace Initiative by the Government of Colombia is a positive development. Despite this, conflict and displacement persist, with 7.7 million children needing humanitarian aid and, of those, 3.1 million in acute need. Displacement of all people rose 50% since 2021, affecting 7.2 million in rural regions, with a particular impact on children.[13]

In 2023, Colombia struggled to protect children and adolescents from violence and exploitation. Child recruitment into armed groups, particularly from areas with large Indigenous populations, remained high. The UN verified 208 cases (35% girls, 65% boys) from January to September 2023, up from 130 cases in 2022. Indigenous children constituted nearly half (48%) of these cases, with the Cauca Department recording the highest rate (38%). Colombia is in a unique geographical location, plagued by the history of armed conflict, migration flows because of armed violence in neighbouring states such as economically devastated Venezuela, and the impact of the global drug trade and human trafficking rings. As a result, children continue to be impacted not only by armed conflict but also by extra‐judicial armed violence.

One of the ongoing and most devastating effects of the continued armed conflict is the strategic targeting of children for trafficking and militias and the impact it has on their families. Civil society has responded – naming this practice of “disappearing” someone or “desapareciendo” as a specific human rights violation.

Children have a fundamental right to participate in decision‐making processes that concern their wellbeing. Too often, children under the age of 18 are not seen as stakeholders in the global peace and security efforts. Preventing children’s involvement in – and exposure to – armed conflict, coupled with concerted efforts to work directly with children and youth to build and sustain peace, is necessary to break intergenerational cycles of armed violence. 

We need to reframe the way we think about and understand children’s participation and protection. Understanding and including children’s perspectives in peace and security can contribute to the empowerment of children as agents of change, bring diverse solutions to intractable problems, and help us to disrupt long‐term consequences of armed conflict that impact children’s identity, belonging and connection to family and communities. The challenge of supporting children’s engagement is not about their lack of capacity but a shortcoming in the imagination of adults to think beyond traditional approaches to peace and security. Building lasting peace and security requires a new approach that addresses the unique challenges that children face before, during and after conflict and one that recognizes that children’s perspectives and protection are at the core of our humanity.