August 2025 – Children in situations of armed conflict across the globe suffer the consequences of largescale violence from State armed forces and non-state armed groups (NSAGs). The resulting harms to children—and to communities and societies more broadly—can be acute and immediate, encompassing violence inflicted during the conduct of hostilities, as well as long-term, including residual physical and psychological harms that shape children’s lives for years, and even decades, well after an armed conflict has concluded. The international community’s efforts to address these harms have entailed continual multilateral endeavors to adopt and implement international legal and policy instruments, as well as efforts undertaken by the United Nations (UN) in the context of the “Children and Armed Conflict” (CAAC) agenda to document, report on, and advocate (via public “naming and shaming” and confidential dialogue) to prevent and address grave violations against children.
This report analyzes the extent to which States in situations on the UN’s CAAC agenda have integrated legal and policy instruments, as well as Security Council recommendations relevant to protecting children during armed conflict, into domestic law. This analysis centers around laws relevant to the six grave violations against children, as well as additional issues— including the military use of schools and hospitals and deprivation of liberty for a child’s alleged or actual association with armed forces and armed groups—that are not classified as grave violations but are addressed by the UN’s Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) on Children and Armed Conflict. The report focuses on the 25 contexts included in the UN Secretary-General’s 2024 annual report on children and armed conflict, with a particular focus on contexts where parties are listed as responsible for perpetrating grave violations against children in the report’s annexes.
This following report provides a general overview of efforts to incorporate international legal and policy instruments into domestic legal frameworks. After this overview, the report examines domestic efforts to adopt laws relevant to each grave violation, reviewing trends across situations included in the Secretary General’s annual reports on CAAC. The report concludes with recommendations for further action by UN Member States, UN stakeholders, civil society, and donors.
Read the full policy note here.
