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STORY: UN / CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT
TRT: 04:23
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / RUSSIAN / NATS
DATELINE: 25 JUNE 2025, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters
25 JUNE 2025, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, Security Council
3. Wide shot, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba addressing Council
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict:
“The year 2024 marked a devastating new record: the United Nations verified 41,370 grave violations against children—a staggering 25 percent increase compared to 2023. Behind these numbers are the shattered stories, dreams, and futures of 22,495 children, each of them profoundly affected by war, displacement, and the collapse of protection systems that should have served as their shield.”
5. Wide shot, Gamba addressing Council
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict:
“This year’s figures are the highest number of children killed and maimed since this mandate was established over two decades ago. Where explosive weapons do not kill, they inflict life-long injuries and disabilities that amplify trauma, stigma, and severely hinder recovery and reintegration, robbing children and their communities of a future free of trauma and hatred.”
7. Wide shot, Gamba addressing Council
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict:
“The denial of humanitarian access has now become one of the gravest obstacles to protecting children in conflict zones. In 2024, attacks on aid convoys, arbitrary detention of humanitarian workers, and bureaucratic barriers severely hindered the delivery of essential services such as food, healthcare, and education.”
9. Wide shot, Gamba addressing Council
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict:
“We cannot continue to stand by and watch with no action what is happening to the children globally, and especially in Gaza. The scale of destruction and suffering borne by the children of Gaza defies and contravenes every human standard. There is no justification for depriving children of access to the means for their survival, including access to food, healthcare, and security.”
11. Wide shot, UNICEF Director of Child Protection and Migration Sheema Sen Gupta addressing Council
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Sheema Sen Gupta, Director of Child Protection and Migration, the United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF):
“We are witnessing a breakdown in the basic protections each of these children is owed — not just as a legal matter, but as a matter of human decency.”
13. Wide shot, Gupta addressing Council
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Sheema Sen Gupta, Director of Child Protection and Migration, the United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF):
“Children are not collateral damage. They are not soldiers. They are not bargaining chips. They are children. They deserve to be safe. They deserve justice. They deserve a future. This Council has a unique role to play in making that future possible. We cannot allow these grave violations against children to continue unchecked.”
15. Wide shot, Council
16. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Russian Federation:
“Ukraine handed over to Russia a list of 339 children, which are alleged to be held in the Russian Federation. And we extended a willingness to study this and to cooperate with Kiev on this matter. This action-oriented opportunity for a substantive dialog was blocked. And we continue to hear about those same alleged 20,000 abducted Ukrainian children, both from media outlets as well as from a number of delegations.”
17. Wide shot, Council
18. Wide shot, ambassadors at the stakeout microphone
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Guyana:
“We are alarmed by the Secretary-General's report of unprecedented levels of violence against children in armed conflict in 2024, and a substantial increase of 25 percent in the six grave violations. We deplore the continued disregard for the rights of children, particularly their inherent right to life. We strongly condemn all violations and abuses committed against children and expressed deep concern that children's rights continue to be violated with impunity.”
20. Pan right, ambassadors walk away
The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for children and armed conflict, Virginia Gamba, today (25 Jun) told the Security Council that 2024 “marked a devastating new record: the United Nations verified 41,370 grave violations against children—a staggering 25 percent increase compared to 2023.”
Presenting the Secretary-General’s annual report on children in armed conflict, Gamba said, “behind these numbers are the shattered stories, dreams, and futures of 22,495 children, each of them profoundly affected by war, displacement, and the collapse of protection systems that should have served as their shield.”
The Special Representative told the Council that this year’s figures “are the highest number of children killed and maimed since this mandate was established over two decades ago,” and said, “where explosive weapons do not kill, they inflict life-long injuries and disabilities that amplify trauma, stigma, and severely hinder recovery and reintegration, robbing children and their communities of a future free of trauma and hatred.”
She said, “the denial of humanitarian access has now become one of the gravest obstacles to protecting children in conflict zones,” noting that “attacks on aid convoys, arbitrary detention of humanitarian workers, and bureaucratic barriers severely hindered the delivery of essential services such as food, healthcare, and education.”
Gamba stressed that “we cannot continue to stand by and watch with no action what is happening to the children globally, and especially in Gaza,” where the scale of destruction and suffering “defies and contravenes every human standard.”
She said, “there is no justification for depriving children of access to the means for their survival, including access to food, healthcare, and security.”
Also briefing, UNICEF’s Director of Child Protection, Sheema Sen Gupta, said, “we are witnessing a breakdown in the basic protections each of these children is owed — not just as a legal matter, but as a matter of human decency.”
Gupta said, “children are not collateral damage. They are not soldiers. They are not bargaining chips. They are children. They deserve to be safe. They deserve justice. They deserve a future. This Council has a unique role to play in making that future possible. We cannot allow these grave violations against children to continue unchecked.”
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya noted to the Council that Ukraine had handed over “a list of 339 children, which are alleged to be held in the Russian Federation,” and Russia had “extended a willingness to study this and to cooperate with Kiev on this matter.”
Nebenzya said, “this action-oriented opportunity for a substantive dialog was blocked. And we continue to hear about those same alleged 20,000 abducted Ukrainian children, both from media outlets as well as from a number of delegations.”
Before the meeting, Council members, except for the Russian Federation, the United States and Somalia presented a statement read by Guyana’s Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett.
The statement expressed alarmed at the “unprecedented levels of violence against children in armed conflict in 2024, and a substantial increase of 25 percent in the six grave violations.”
It deplored “the continued disregard for the rights of children, particularly their inherent right to life,” and “strongly condemn all violations and abuses committed against children and expressed deep concern that children's rights continue to be violated with impunity.”
The report covers 25 country situations, and notes that the countries with the highest levels of violations in 2024 were Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, notably the Gaza Strip, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Nigeria, and Haiti.
Cases of sexual violence also rose by 35 percent with 1,982 verified cases, according to the report.
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