LONDON (Realist English). One in every five children globally — about 520 million — lived in active conflict zones in 2024, the highest number on record for the third year in a row, according to a report released Tuesday by Save the Children.
The organisation documented 41,763 grave violations against children last year, a 30% increase from 2023. On average, 78 children each day were killed, maimed, abducted, recruited by armed groups, or sexually abused.
The charity said that growing up in militarised areas often forces children to drop out of school, flee their homes, and endure long-term physical and psychological trauma.
“This disproportionate rise in grave violations shows not only greater exposure to war but also a deep erosion of international norms meant to protect children from harm,” said Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children.
“Relying solely on military and security measures has failed to protect children from the gravest abuses,” she added.
The report found 61 state-based conflicts in 2024, meaning at least one party to each conflict was a national government. Despite the scale of violence, less than 2% of global security funding went toward peacebuilding or peacekeeping, while military spending soared to a record $2.7 trillion, up more than 9%, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The study identified Africa as the region with the largest number of children living in conflict zones — 218 million — surpassing the Middle East for the first time since 2007.
However, the occupied Palestinian territories accounted for the highest number of verified violations, with one in three children killed or injured in war last year being Palestinian.
Overall, more than half of all child rights violations occurred in Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and Somalia, underscoring what Save the Children described as a “collapse of moral and legal boundaries” in modern warfare.
