July 2025 – The report from Watchlist’s January 2025 annual policy workshop on children and armed conflict (CAAC), hosted jointly with Columbia University’s School of International and Political Affairs (SIPA), will be issued as an official UN Security Council document at the request of the Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations.
The workshop convened representatives of United Nations Member States, including members of the Security Council, the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (OSRSG-CAAC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Department of Peace Operations (DPO), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), civil society organizations, and academia to discuss priorities for the UN’s CAAC agenda in 2025. This is the twelfth such policy workshop organized by Watchlist since 2013, and the second co-organized with Columbia University. The workshop sought to engage participants in identifying priorities and developing recommendations for concrete, targeted actions to be taken in the coming year within the framework of the CAAC agenda.
The workshop consisted of four closed working sessions dedicated to (1) supporting implementation of the CAAC agenda through the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict (SCWG-CAAC) and the Group of Friends (GoF) of CAAC; (2) examining how available tools and international frameworks can be leveraged to address CAAC challenges in escalating conflicts, the impact of conflict dynamics on child protection mechanisms, and opportunities to strengthen responses through political, legal, and normative frameworks; (3) the implementation of UN Security Council recommendations on CAAC, highlighting good practices, challenges, and gaps in the dissemination and follow-up of Working Group conclusions and Security Council resolutions at the national and international levels; and (4) the role of child protection staff in UN peacekeeping and special political missions, the challenges of preserving child protection capacities during mission transitions or drawdowns, and strategies to ensure continued expertise and support in these contexts.
Read the summary report of the January 2025 Annual Policy Workshop.
