UNSC Chair Speaks on Children in Armed Conflict

After the examination of the ninth report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/2024/705) and the adoption of conclusions on the report, the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict agreed to address the following messages through a public statement by the Chair of the Working Group.

To all parties to armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

• Strongly condemning all violations and abuses that continue to be committed against children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in particular the devastatingly high number of the six grave violations committed against children in North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika; urging all parties to the conflict to immediately end and prevent all violations and abuses involving the recruitment and use of children, abduction, killing and maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence, attacks on schools and hospitals and denial of humanitarian access and to comply with their obligations under applicable international law, including international humanitarian law; noting with concern that the ability of the country task force to monitor and verify information on the six grave violations was affected by the volatile security situation, armed groups' activities and military operations, the state of siege in North Kivu and Ituri, access restrictions imposed by parties to conflict, anti-MONUSCO sentiment, logistical challenges, including troop rotations and fuel restrictions and MONUSCO's withdrawal from South Kivu and calling upon all parties to the conflict to ensure the unimpeded access of the country task force; noting with concern that extreme weather events, such as flooding and landslides, further worsened the humanitarian situation and, coupled with inadequate infrastructure and underdevelopment, restricted children's access to clean water, good sanitation, quality education and health services;
• Calling upon all parties to the conflict to further implement the previous conclusions of the Working Group on children and armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/AC.51/2022/7);
• Stressing the importance of accountability for all violations and abuses against children in armed conflict and also stressing that all perpetrators of such acts must be swiftly brought to justice and held accountable, without undue delay, including through independent, timely and systematic investigation, and, as appropriate, prosecution and conviction, noting Law No. 09/001 on the protection of the child, adopted by the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 10 January 2009; welcoming the ongoing efforts of the Government to hold perpetrators of the six grave violations against children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo accountable; welcoming the commitment of the government to implementing its 2012 action plan, encouraging the continuation of accountability efforts and further stressing the need to ensure that all victims and survivors have access to justice, including the medical and psychosocial support that they need;
• Stressing that the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration, and that the particular and specific needs and vulnerabilities of girls and boys, children with disabilities, unaccompanied and separated children and forcibly displaced children, should be duly considered when planning and carrying out actions concerning children in situations of armed conflict;
• Condemning the increase in the recruitment and use of children committed by armed groups and expressing concern that it continues to be the most prevalent violation verified in the report, and further condemning the sharp increase in the number of children newly recruited; welcoming the absence of verified cases of recruitment and use by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congolese National Police; urging all parties to the conflict to immediately cease the recruitment and use of children and to immediately and without preconditions release all children within their ranks and hand them over to civilian child protection actors for their full reintegration through family- and community-based reintegration programmes as well as to end and prevent further recruitment and use of children, including the re-recruitment of children who have been released, consistent with their obligations under international law, including, as applicable, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which was ratified by the DRC in 1990; urging the armed groups who have not yet done so to enter into dialogue with the United Nations and sign commitments to end and prevent the six grave violations;
• Strongly condemning the sharp increase in the killing and maiming of children, making the present reporting period the deadliest period for children since the establishment of the monitoring and reporting mechanism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including as a result of hostilities between parties, military operations, attacks on civilian population, the use of explosive ordnance, torture, ill-treatment, and in the context of intercommunal violence; urging all parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular the principles of distinction, necessity, humanity and proportionality and the obligation to take feasible precautions to avoid and in any event minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects, and noting the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and Their Destruction;
• Expressing grave concern about the ongoing prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence against children by the parties to the conflict; noting that such acts included rape, forced marriage, gang-rape, sexual slavery and attempted rape; strongly urging all parties to the armed conflict to take immediate and specific measures to end and prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence against children; stressing the importance of accountability for those who commit sexual and gender-based violence against children; noting with concern the underreporting of cases of sexual violence against children owing to fear of reprisals by perpetrators, who sometimes live in or near the community, stigmatization, continued widespread impunity and lack of access to adequate services for victims and survivors; stressing the importance of providing to them gender-sensitive, age-appropriate, disability-inclusive, non-discriminatory and comprehensive specialized services at local level, including mental health and psychosocial support, healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health services, and legal and livelihood support and services;
• Condemning attacks on schools and hospitals, which involved looting, the destruction of related infrastructure and facilities and attacks against protected persons in relation to schools and hospitals; urging all parties to armed conflict to comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, as applicable, and to respect the civilian character of schools and hospitals, including their personnel, as such, and to immediately prevent and end attacks or threats of attacks against those institutions and their personnel, and end and prevent the military use of schools, as guided by the Safe Schools Declaration, which was endorsed by the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in July 2016, as well as the damage, destruction, military use or closure of hospitals, further weakening the capacity of the health system;
• Condemning the significant Increase in cases of abduction of children, the overwhelming majority of which were committed by armed groups, including for the purposes of recruitment and use, extortion and/or ransom, rape and other forms of sexual violence and for the reason of alleged association with an opposing party to the conflict; noting that there were instances of children abducted in neighbouring Uganda, and noting the significant increase of cases in North Kivu, Ituri and South Kivu during the reporting period; urging all relevant parties to immediately release without preconditions all abducted children and hand them over to relevant civilian child protection actors;
• Expressing grave concern that verified in the report incidents of denial of humanitarian access in South Kivu, Ituri and North Kivu increased by 62 per cent, including the perpetration of violence against, abduction and killing of humanitarian personnel and the looting of humanitarian vehicles; noting that the majority of incidents were committed by armed groups, and calling upon all parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate, in accordance with international law, including international humanitarian law, safe, timely and unhindered humanitarian access, and recalling also the United Nations guiding principles of humanitarian assistance adopted in General Assembly resolution 46/182, as well as the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, to respect the exclusively humanitarian nature and impartiality of humanitarian aid and to respect the work of all United Nations agencies, and their humanitarian partners, without adverse distinction;
• Welcoming the peace agreement signed by the Foreign Ministers of the DRC and Rwanda on 27 June 2025 and calling on all parties to the conflict for the full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 2773, and to refrain from any violations and abuses against children;
• Urging all parties to facilitate and support MONUSCO's implementation of all elements of its mandate, including its child protection mandate;

To the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

• Commending the efforts of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, supported by the United Nations on screening, age assessment and separation of children from the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congolese National Police during recruitment processes; calling on the Government to fully implement the 2012 action plan to end and prevent the six grave violations against children, with a focus on addressing rape and other forms of sexual violence which remained the violation most attributed to its armed and security forces; welcoming the continued strong commitment of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congolese National Police to implementing the action plan, and the issuance of directives to prevent the six grave violations against children; welcoming the work of the national and provincial joint technical working groups on children and armed conflict and their collaboration with the country task force as well as the support to the decentralized implementation of the Disarmament, Demobilization, Community Recovery and Stabilization Programme; welcoming the legislative advances on child protection, with (i) the adoption of Act No. 22/065 of 26 December 2022, which establishes the fundamental principles on protection and reparations for victims of conflict-related sexual violence and victims of crimes against the peace and security of mankind, (ii) the establishment of the National Reparations Fund for Victims of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Other Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind by the Parliament of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in December 2022, (iii) a decree regarding a military and police code of conduct and ethics for the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (iv) the promulgation of a law establishing a national Armed Defence Reserve, aimed at creating a reserve force for the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, requiring candidates to be at least 18 years old at the time of recruitment; welcoming the alignment of the provisions of the 2022 disarmament, demobilization and reintegration operational framework for children with the national strategy set out under the Disarmament, Demobilization, Community Recovery and Stabilization Programme; recognizing the prosecution and conviction of some perpetrators for sexual violence and the killing of children and encouraging the continuation of accountability efforts;
• Noting with concern the deprivation of liberty of children for their alleged association with armed groups, while welcoming the release from detention of all children at the end of the reporting period; calling upon the Government to treat children formerly associated with armed groups primarily as victims and to hand them over to child protection actors, in line with its 2013 directives issued by the Minister for Defence and the National Intelligence Agency;
• Stressing the primary role of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in providing protection and relief to all children affected by armed conflict, recognizing the importance of strengthening national capacities in this regard and emphasizing the importance of sustainable child protection capacity, including during transition phases of relevant United Nations peace operations;
• Ensuring sustainable family- and community-based reintegration, including through socioeconomic and school reintegration support, social reintegration activities, the provision of psychosocial and mental health support to children affected by armed conflict, delivered mainly through age-appropriate focus group discussions taking into account the specific needs and vulnerabilities of boys and girls, access to child-friendly spaces, as well as activities on how to prevent and respond to sexual violence against children;

To armed groups, including Alliance des forces de résistance congolaise, Alliance des patriotes pour un Congo libre et souverain, Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), Coopérative pour le développement du Congo (CODECO), Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda-Forces combattantes abacunguzi (FDLR-FOCA), Force de résistance patriotique de l'Ituri, Lord's Resistance Army, Mai-Mai Apa na Pale, Mai-Mai Mazembe, Mai-Mai Simba, Mai-Mai Zaïre, Mouvement du 23 mars (M23), Nduma défense du Congo-Rénové (NDC-R), Nyatura, Raia Mutomboki, Twigwaneho:

• Expressing its deep concern about the continued presence and ongoing destabilizing activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of a large number of armed groups and their harmful impact on children, as the overwhelming majority of violations verified in the report were attributed to armed groups;
• Welcoming the release of hundreds of children in South Kivu; welcoming the signing of two unilateral declarations, by the commander of Mai-Mai Machine and by the commander of Raia Mutomboki Kiriku, to end and prevent the recruitment and use and other of the six grave violations against children and accompanying road maps for their implementation, resulting in the immediate release of 13 children and of 20 children, respectively;
• Recalling in this regard that several of those non-State armed groups have been listed in annex I to the report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict for at least six consecutive years, including Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, Forces combattantes abacunguzi (FDLR-FOCA), Force de résistance patriotique de l'Ituri (FRPI), Nduma défense du Congo-Rénové (NDC-R), Nyatura, Raia Mutomboki, Mai-Mai Simba and the Lord's Resistance Army;
• Recalling that the Security Council, by its resolution 2783(2025): (i) decided to renew until 1 July 2026 the measures as set out in paragraphs 1 to 6 of resolution 2293 (2016), including its reaffirmations therein, with the exception of paragraph 5 of resolution 1807 (2008), including with respect to paragraph 3 (c) of resolution 2293 (2016) for which there is no longer a notification requirement, (ii) affirmed that paragraph 1 of this resolution is consistent with paragraphs 1 and 2 of resolution 2667 (2022) and that the measures set forth in paragraph 1 of resolution 1807 (2008) continue to apply to all non-governmental entities and individuals operating in the territory of the DRC, (iii) reaffirmed that measures described in paragraph 5 of resolution 2293 (2016) shall apply to individuals and entities as designated by the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as set forth in paragraph 7 of resolution 2293 (2016), paragraph 3 of resolution 2360 (2017), paragraph 3 of resolution 2582 (2021) and paragraph 3 of resolution 2641 (2022) and recalls paragraph 1 of resolution 2664 (2022), which include individuals or entities operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are involved in acts including: (i) Recruiting or using children in armed conflict in violation of international law; (ii) Planning, directing or committing acts that constitute human rights violations or abuses or violations of international humanitarian law, as applicable, including those acts involving the targeting of civilians, including killing and maiming, rape and other sexual violence, abduction, forced displacement and attacks on schools and hospitals; and (iii) Obstructing the access to or the distribution of humanitarian assistance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Recalling the Working Group's readiness to communicate to the Committee pertinent information with a view to assisting the Council in the imposition of targeted measures on persistent perpetrators.

To community and religious leaders:

• Emphasizing the important role of community and religious leaders and civil society in strengthening the protection of children affected by armed conflict;
• Urging them to publicly condemn and continue to advocate ending and preventing violations and abuses against children, and to engage with the Government, the United Nations and other relevant stakeholders to support the release and reintegration of children affected by armed conflict in their communities, including by raising awareness to avoid stigmatization of these children.