When explosive weapons are used in populated areas, children are impacted in distinct and severe ways and their specific recovery needs are often overlooked in resource-scarce conflict environments. In 2023, armed conflict caused unprecedented levels of harm to children, resulting in nearly 33,000 UN-verified grave violations – the highest number ever recorded by the UN. The impact of explosive weapons as a driver of those violations is pervasive throughout the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict, which details serious harm experienced by children across 26 armed-conflict situations. This article explores the harm explosive weapons caused children in 2023, according to UN data, across the six grave violations against children in armed conflict.
Introduction
Children are far too often victimized in war. They face recruitment and use by armed forces and armed groups – being forced to witness and sometimes commit horrible violence. They are killed, injured, raped and abducted. Their schools and hospitals are attacked or taken over for military purposes, and they are denied access to vital lifesaving humanitarian aid. Far from an exhaustive list, these six particularly grievous harms children face in war have been termed “grave violations” by the United Nations (UN). In response, a range of tools have been established to end and prevent these harms and to protect children’s rights in war.
Far from an exception to this reality, 2023 was the worst year on record since the UN began systematically recording grave violations against children with its Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism, established in 2005 by Security Council Resolution 1612. UN monitors were able to document and verify a staggering 32,990 grave violations against children across 26 armed conflict situations,i of which 30,705 occurred between 1 January and 31 December 2023 (the remaining violations were committed earlier but verified in 2023). The situations with the highest number of verified grave violations included Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria, and Sudan. The full details of these violations were released in early June with the publication of the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict.ii
As in previous years, explosive weapons in populated areas continued to present a significant source of danger to children’s lives and wellbeing in 2023. In at least 13 situations monitored by the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) mandate, at least 60 percent of verified child casualties were explicitly attributed to explosive weapons. The impact of explosive weapons on children is not limited, however, to child casualties. Homes, schools, playgrounds, nurseries, health centres and other areas that should be safe spaces for children have come under attack, including with explosive weapons. Not only did these attacks cause death and injury but, crucially, set back children’s ability to realize rights such as education and healthcare, with far-reaching consequences.
Child casualties from explosive weapons in 2023
Each year, children are killed and gravely injured by explosive ordnance, airstrikes and drone strikes, shelling, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices. In an analysis of publicly available UN data on grave violations against children from 2012 to 2022, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict (‘Watchlist’) found over 30,000 child casualties expressly attributed to explosive weapons.iii Child casualties in this context, refers to the grave violation of killing and maiming children as defined by the UN’s Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism.iv
Both the overall numbers and proportion of child casualties from explosive weapons appear to have increased over that time frame. However, this may be due in part to changes in the level of data disaggregation included in the Secretary-General’s reports across different years. These numbers are likely to be a significant underestimate, since they only include those incidents the UN was able to verify, and not all casualties are attributed to a specific weapon type in the reports.
In 2023, UN monitors documented and verified the killing and maiming of 11,649 children across 26 conflict situations covered in the Secretary-General’s annual report. Of those, explosive weapons accounted for over 60 percent of the total child casualties in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. In Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the UN was able to verify 4,242 incidents of the killing and maiming of children, and verification remained ongoing at the time of publication for 19,887 additional reports of Palestinian children killed or maimed.v For example:
- In Syria, 99 percent of all verified child casualties were caused by airstrikes, ground shelling, and explosive ordnance.vi
- In Israel and Palestine, 2,051 Palestinian children were verified as killed in the Gaza Strip between 7 October and 31 December 2023, where most incidents were caused by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by Israeli and armed security forces.vii An additional 9,100 Palestinian children were reported killed, and the UN continues to verify these reports.
- In Myanmar, an uptick in indiscriminate and targeted attacks by the Myanmar armed forces included the use of explosive ordnance affecting children.viii
- In Ukraine, out of a total of 419 child casualties, 363 children were killed or injured by explosive weapons with wide-area effects and 51 were killed or injured by explosive ordnance.ix
Child-specific harms from blast injuries
When explosive weapons are used in war, children experience different types of injuries than adults who are affected by blasts, posing serious challenges to responders and resulting in higher fatality rates.x One study on casualties in the Syrian conflict found that children were as much as seven times more likely to die from blast injuries than adults.xi The areas and proportion of children’s bodies that are impacted in a blast, the severity of the injuries children sustain, and the resulting complex health care requirements to treat children, all contribute to their heightened fatality rates.
For example, children are overwhelmingly likely to experience penetrating injuries to the face, head and upper body from blast fragmentation and debris and tend to experience multiple injuries. Infants and young children have thinner skin. As such, they are more likely to experience severe burns and burns affecting a much larger portion of their bodies when compared to adults.xii The greater intensity of injuries experienced by children results in disproportionate requirements for health services, including surgeries. Even trained medical staff can lack the specialized training, experience, and equipment for treating children with blast injuries in armed conflict.
Those children who survive blast injuries still face complex, long-term recovery and rehabilitation needs, which are frequently difficult to meet in resource-scarce conflict or post-conflict settings. For example, lost limbs or amputations due to blast injuries impact children’s skeletal growth and may require multiple surgeries as children grow, and prosthetics and other assistive devices designed for children can be difficult to obtain, costly and need to be frequently replaced as children grow. The mental health consequences for children who have suffered a blast injury, lost family members to explosive weapons, or been repeatedly exposed to explosive weapons through living in a conflict zone are also profound, and resources to address these consequences are scarce.xiii
Impact on children’s access to education, healthcare and vital humanitarian aid
In addition to the direct impact on children’s survival and wellbeing, explosive weapons also impact children’s ability to live and thrive through their impact on a host of other services vital to children’s lives, such as education, water, sanitation, nutrition and access to vital medical care, including immunizations.
Explosive weapons have featured in attacks killing or injuring humanitarian workers in conflict settings. For example, according to the Aid Worker Security Report 2024, 212 aid workers were killed in Gaza in 2023 with the vast majority as a result of aerial bombardment.xiv Ongoing use of explosive weapons in populated areas can prevent humanitarian responders from reaching children with lifesaving aid and may even lead to temporary suspensions of activities due to unacceptable levels of risk.
The use of explosive weapons in populated areas often damages or destroys critical infrastructure, limiting children’s access to essential services, such as water and sanitation, and leaving them open to a myriad of additional harms, including indirect or reverberating impacts. Children suffer quickly and severely when such essential services break down. For example, children may face malnutrition, stunting, or lose access to immunizations when essential infrastructure is destroyed by explosive weapons. Cholera and diarrheal diseases remain a leading cause of mortality among children under five years old and are strongly linked to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Attacks on education – also on the rise according to the UN and other sources – have also seen an increase in the proportion of attacks using explosive weapons. According to the latest Education Under Attack report launched in June 2024, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) found that explosive weapons were used in one-third of all attacks on education in 2022 and 2023 – up from one-fifth of attacks in 2020 and 2021.xv The use of explosive weapons was documented by GCPEA in attacks on education in Colombia, Myanmar, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
Intersectional impacts and mental health
In addition to those areas detailed above, more research on a range of topics can provide a fuller picture of the impact on children from explosive weapons and actions that can be taken to mitigate harm. For example, a deeper understanding of how exposure to explosive weapons effects children’s mental health and psychological well-being, coupled with significant increases in the resources available to address these effects, is vital. Children’s experiences of war are also shaped by their age, gender (and the socio-cultural norms and expectations regarding gender roles), whether they have a disability, and other intersectional factors. All these factors are likely to impact, for example, where a child is when a blast occurs, how they will react, and the physical injuries they sustain. More resources dedicated to understanding the complex experiences of children exposed to explosive weapons can help shape a more effective response.
Tools to leverage
The severe and far-reaching consequences that explosive weapons pose for children living in warzones and the unprecedented levels of harm experienced by children in recent years should heighten the urgency with which policymakers, armed forces, humanitarians and other actors prioritize the protection of children. This must result in a commitment to meaningful, concrete action and the leveraging of all available tools to prevent further harm including, crucially, the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict agenda and the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas.