Watchlist Digital Library on Children and Armed Conflict

Welcome to the Watchlist Digital Library on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC). The aim of this digital library is to support the work of advocates, researchers, and other stakeholders engaging on the CAAC agenda to better protect children during armed conflict. This digital library includes key multilateral and national documents relevant to the CAAC agenda, which centers around the six grave violations against children in armed conflict, those being:

  1. Recruitment and use of children by armed forces and armed groups
  2. Killing and maiming of children
  3. Rape and other forms of sexual violence against children
  4. Attacks against schools or hospitals
  5. Abduction of children
  6. Denial of humanitarian access for children

Multilateral Documents

The multilateral documents in this digital library include United Nations Security Council resolutions adopted on CAAC since 1999, as well as the United Nations Secretary General’s annual reports on CAAC published since 2000.

National Legal and Policy Documents

The national documents include national legal and policy documents—such as legislation, constitutional provisions, judicial decisions, and executive orders—that integrate the multilateral CAAC agenda into the domestic level.

  • Countries. The contexts of focus for this portion of the digital library are countries that are central to the CAAC agenda, including country contexts where parties to armed conflict have been listed in annexes to the United Nations Secretary General’s annual reports on CAAC, as well as other situations included in these reports.
  • Scope of Documents. The corpus of domestic documents includes legal and policy documents directly relevant to the six grave violations against children in armed conflict, as well as other documents more broadly related to child rights and/or integrating relevant areas of international law—including international humanitarian law and international criminal law—into domestic legal and policy structures and processes.
  • Time Span. The majority of the documents included in this portion of the digital library were adopted since the initiation of the CAAC agenda in 1999. However, the digital library also includes national and legal documented adopted earlier, allowing for an examination of how national laws and policies have evolved in response to multilateral CAAC advocacy efforts.

The Watchlist CAAC Digital Library was last updated on March 26, 2025.

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