On International Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights Day, Save the Children sounds the alarmand in the smallest and most helpless conditions and underscores that “children attacked”. War, famine, climate crisis and poverty threaten millions of minors. By 2024, 70% of children killed in conflict were exposed to explosive devices. By 2025, 118 million children will suffer from hunger and more than 48 million children will be victims of climate disasters. In Europe in the last five years, more than 446 thousand children were affected by poverty. In Italy there are 1.28 million minors who are in absolute poverty. The organization underscores the need to reverse the trend of placing children’s rights at the center of the international community’s political agenda.
Based on report “Minors and blast injuries: the devastating impact of explosive weapons on children”released today, these devices were responsible for 70% of the nearly 12,000 children killed or injured in war zones last year, as conflicts increasingly move to urban areas. This figure is much higher than the 2020-2024 period (average around 59%). In 2024, UN data shows that 4,676 children died in conflict zones and 7,291 were injured, bringing the total number of victims to 11,967. This number is the highest figure ever recorded, up 42% compared to 8,422 child victims in 2020, as war becomes increasingly urban, more destructive, and characterized by increasing impunity. For the third year in a row, government forces were identified as primarily responsible for the deaths and injuries of these children, many of which were caused by the large-scale use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas. State-made explosives now cause 54% of civilian deaths and injuries, up from 17% in 2020. Since the 1990s, the number of boys and girls living under the burden of war has more than doubled, now reaching a record 520 million children and young people, more than one in five globally in active conflict zones, with a 30% increase in cases of serious violations against children in conflict, with record numbers of killings, mutilations, assaults sexual assault, and sexual violence. kidnapping.
Further data – continues Save the Children – shows how the world has become an extremely dangerous place for minorswho are increasingly deprived of their rights. Of the approximately 118 million children suffering from hunger in 2025, nearly 63 million – more than half – are forced into this situation because of conflict, which remains the leading cause of hunger in the world – sometimes even used as a weapon of war. Globally, acute malnutrition is the cause of about half the deaths of boys and girls under 5 years of age. Even worse are recent international aid cuts that jeopardize support for programs critical to the health, nutrition and education of millions of children. In addition, 1 in 4 people in the world who are in conditions of exploitation or modern slavery are minors, equivalent to 12.3 million people, while around 48 million minors per year, or an average of 136 thousand per day, have been affected by climate disasters in the last 30 years.
Narrowing the scope to the European level, there are more than 446 thousand children – equivalent to an average of 244 children per day – affected by poverty in Europe in the last five years. Italy is fifth last in the EU in terms of the percentage of children at risk of poverty and social exclusion, namely 27.1%7, while children in absolute poverty in our country number 1.28 million8, or 13.8% of the total number of minors in absolute poverty.
The special rights of children and adolescents – ranging from education, protection, food and safety from exploitation – are ignored and trampled on in many contexts, it is the result of conflict, humanitarian crises, extreme poverty or the climate crisis, leading to boys and girls being unable to attend school, having to leave their homes, seeking a future elsewhere on dangerous journeys, and taking desperate measures to survive.
Save the Children calls on world leaders to stop the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas and protect children in conflict. More generally, the Organization underscores the need to reverse the trend in governments and institutions, which is towards investing in children, always placing the protection, needs and rights of young children at the center of the international community’s political agenda.
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