No Peace Without Child Disarmament: A Global Imperative

In 2025, the United Nations documented 38,558 grave violations against children caught in armed conflicts around the world—the highest count since the organization began tracking these abuses. Of the 24,174 children affected, 6,607 were recruited or used directly by armed forces and armed groups. The rest were killed, maimed, subjected to sexual violence, abducted, or cut off from humanitarian aid. The violations occurred across multiple conflict zones: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, and other territories where fighting continues. The children who were recruited did not serve in uniform as soldiers alone. They worked as cooks, porters, messengers, and spies. Some were forced into roles that exposed them to exploitation and abuse at every turn.

The pathways into armed groups are varied but rarely voluntary. Most children are abducted or coerced through threats and manipulation. Others drift in because their families are poor and the armed group offers income. Some are driven by the desire for revenge after losing loved ones. Armed groups deliberately target children because they view them as expendable—easier to replace than adult fighters if they are killed or lost. Research on Sierra Leone's civil war shows that economic desperation, social breakdown, and political pressure create conditions where children lack any genuine choice about joining. Once inside, the groups employ a calculated psychological tactic: they force children to commit atrocities. By making a child kill, the group ensures that child will be rejected by their own family and community. The bonds that might have enabled escape are severed deliberately. The violence is not random cruelty; it is a tool of control.

This creates a profound legal and moral puzzle. The children are simultaneously victims and perpetrators. They have committed acts that violate human rights, yet they were forced to do so by adults who placed weapons in their hands. The United Nations Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict has insisted that children associated with armed groups must be treated primarily as victims. Detention should be used only as a last resort and for the shortest time possible. International law, including the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, prohibits recruitment of anyone under eighteen. The Paris Principles, adopted in 2011, reinforce this framework. But law on paper cannot stop a gun from being placed in a child's hands, and it cannot erase what happens after.

The psychological scars run deep. Children who have been forced to fight carry trauma that can last a lifetime. Reintegration into civilian life is blocked by that trauma, by the stigma attached to them in their own communities, and by the rejection of families who themselves are broken by war. Afghanistan offers a cautionary example. After the Taliban takeover in 2021, child protection programs that had been built over decades were dismantled in weeks. In Yemen, armed groups continue to recruit children despite international commitments to stop, because there are no real consequences for those who violate the rules.

Yet there is evidence that healing is possible when the right support exists. Sierra Leone, once called the children's war because so many young people were forced to fight, has become a model of recovery. UNICEF and partner organizations helped former child soldiers return to school and learn trades. The Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration program there is cited as a successful case study. Don Bosco Fambul, an organization founded in 1998 specifically to rehabilitate and reintegrate child soldiers, now operates the largest interim care and therapeutic centers for abused children in the country. It provides psychosocial support, education, skills training, and helps reunite children with their families. In Northern Uganda, communities have adapted the Acholi traditional reconciliation ceremony called Mato Oput—meaning to drink the bitter root—to help formerly abducted children return home with dignity. The ritual involves symbolic cleansing that allows forgiveness and reintegration. Colombia's peace process with the FARC included provisions for releasing children from armed groups and treating them as victims first, with particular attention to Indigenous children and children of African descent, who bore a disproportionate share of the violations.

In 2024 alone, 16,482 children who had been associated with armed forces or groups received protection or reintegration support in countries on the UN's monitoring agenda. Virginia Gamba, the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, has stated that every child released should be seen as a survivor and as an agent of change, capable of helping build lasting peace in their own communities. The path forward requires five commitments from the international community. First, every peace agreement must include specific provisions for child soldiers—their release, reintegration, and protection. No peace deal is complete without them. Second, flexible and sustainable funding must flow to community-based reintegration programs. Third, monitoring and accountability mechanisms must be strengthened so that violators face real consequences: sanctions, arms embargoes, prosecution. The 2024 data shows that non-state armed groups were responsible for almost half of all grave violations, while government forces were the main perpetrators of killings, maimings, attacks on schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access. Fourth, the international community must resist political pressure to weaken child protection programs. These are not luxuries; they are fundamental human rights. Fifth, the prohibition on child recruitment must be treated as absolute. There is no exception, no compromise. Every child in an armed group is a violation of international law. How the world chooses to see these children—and how it chooses to protect them—will determine whether any peace agreement can truly last.