From Syria to Yemen, boys and girls are being killed and maimed as their hometowns are bombed and placed under violent siege. Schools, hospitals and other places where children should be safe are targeted in horrific attacks. Food and sexual violence are used as weapons of war.
Humanitarian needs of children are expected to reach new records in 2021. The numbers of children living in areas affected by conflict and the numbers of displaced children remain at historic highs.
The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to push millions of children into acute food insecurity and other deprivations including reduced access to education and diminishing gender equality. Meanwhile an increasingly unstable climate is driving up risks caused by weather-related disasters.
Even wars must have limits.
We’re pushing for governments around the world to make sure that children caught up in conflict are protected. But war is putting children at risk as never before.
We work relentlessly to defend children against the horrors of war and to uphold their right to be protected. A right that our founder helped establish.
Operating as part of a movement that works in 120 countries, our department designs and implements change-making strategies. We use all our skills to combine lobbying, policy, research, campaigning and media into one agile, powerful engine for change.
Our current focus is on protecting children in conflict from Yemen to Myanmar and Bangladesh, to Syria and the occupied Palestinian Territory.
States and armed actors must uphold standards of conduct in conflict, hold perpetrators of violations to account and take practical action to help children on the ground.
We’re pushing for states to endorse and implement the ‘Safe Schools Declaration’, endorse a political declaration committing to the avoidance of explosive weapons in populated areas that have such terrible impacts on children and champion accountability for grave violations of children’s rights in armed conflict.
