Protection of Child Soldiers in Africa (UNSCR 1612 (2005))
Protection of Child Soldiers in Africa (UNSCR 1612 (2005))Date | 1 September 2026
Tomorrow (2 September), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to convene its 1368th meeting to discuss the theme, ‘Protection of Child Soldiers in Africa (UNSCR 1612 (2005)).’
Following opening remarks by Hervé Djokpe, Permanent Representative of Benin to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for September, Bankole Adeoye, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), is expected to make a statement. Jainaba Jagne, AU Special Envoy for Children Affected by Armed Conflict (CAAC), is also expected to make a statement, followed by Robert Doya Nanima, Special Rapporteur on Children and Armed Conflict. In addition, the session is also likely to get statements from the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, a representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to the AU and a representative from the African Platform on Children affected by Armed Conflicts (AP CAAC) – as Co-Chair. A Save the Children representative may also be present.
It is worth recalling that UN Security Council Resolution 1612, adopted in 2005, established the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism on children and armed conflict, creating a systematic framework for documenting the six grave violations against children in conflict zones, which include killing and maiming, recruitment and use as child soldiers, sexual violence, attacks on schools and hospitals, abduction and denial of humanitarian access.
The UN Secretary-General’s 2026 annual report on children and armed conflict, released in June and covering January–December 2025, which also marked the 30th anniversary of the mandate, verified 38,558 grave violations against 24,174 children, including 3,176 subjected to multiple violations. For the first time in three decades of UN monitoring, state and government forces were responsible for more grave violations than non-state armed groups, a significant shift from the pattern that has traditionally shaped PSC discussions on the issue. Among African situations, the DRC (4,114 violations), Nigeria (2,560) and Somalia (2,195) recorded the highest verified totals, ranking among the five worst-affected situations globally. Recruitment and use of children remained a major concern, continuing a trend identified in the 2025 report, which recorded 7,402 verified cases worldwide. In a February 2026 Joint Statement by the AU, EU and UN on the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, it was highlighted that one in five children worldwide lives in conflict-affected settings. The statement went further and called on all parties in conflict situations to ‘comply fully with international law, to immediately and unconditionally release all children from their ranks, and to ensure that children associated with parties to conflict are treated first and foremost as victims.’
The PSC, on its part, has a long track record of engaging with the issue of child soldiers, having taken it up in substantive discussions and decisions across several sessions. Notably, at its 420th session, held on 18 February 2014, the Council decided, among other things, to hold a session each year dedicated to issues affecting children on the continent. This engagement has since intensified, with the PSC now holding even two sessions annually on the theme. This will be the second session this year under the theme of child protection in Conflict Situations, following the Council’s 1357th meeting in August 2026, which focused on ‘Education in Conflict Situations in Africa.’
From the meeting, the PSC tasked the AU Commission, in coordination with the ACERWC, ‘to organise an advocacy meeting with Member States that have not yet signed or ratified relevant international and continental instruments [including the ACERWC] and the Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict… and to report back to the PSC.’ In the same vein, the PSC went further and tasked the AU Commission, ‘based on documented sources and proven evidence, to develop and maintain a concise, disaggregated continental monitoring framework tracking attacks on schools, closures, military use, safe reopening, enrolment, retention, learning outcomes, and inclusion metrics.’ It is worth recalling that the same meeting considered the implementation matrix as part of the PSC working documents developed following the 1296th PSC meeting, which aims to translate Council decisions into 18 time-bound actions with designated lead institutions. This implementation matrix model should extend to the PSC’s entire body of work on children and armed conflict. Many past decisions on the theme remain hard to track precisely because they were never anchored to a time-bound implementation tool. Retroactively applying the matrix, even in condensed form, would let the Council audit what has actually been delivered against decades of commitments, rather than simply ‘recalling’ prior sessions without clarity on follow-through. This would also ease the resourcing and coordination gaps flagged periodically, make duplication easier to spot, and give the Council a concrete basis for review each time it revisits the theme.
In addition, its 1314th meeting held in November 2025 on ‘Children Affected by Armed Conflicts’ tasked the Chairperson of the AU Commission to ‘commission a comprehensive study on the nexus between armed conflicts and violations against children.’ Relatedly, the 1262nd PSC meeting held in February 2025 on the ‘Fight Against the Use of Child Soldiers in Africa’ tasked the ACERWC to expedite finalisation of the comprehensive study on child soldiers in Africa. Earlier this year, ACERWC initiated and commissioned the Terms of Reference for the conduct of the study. The study will aim to examine the nature, scale, patterns and drivers of the recruitment and use of children by armed forces and armed groups in West and Central Africa, including the DRC, Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and Mali. In North, East and Southern Africa, it will include Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Mozambique. The study will assess the political, socio-economic, security, governance and community-level factors driving emerging risks, and to evaluate the adequacy, effectiveness and alignment of existing legal, policy, institutional, prevention, accountability, rehabilitation and reintegration responses with the African Children’s Charter and relevant regional and international standards. It will also seek to identify key gaps and good practices and put forward actionable recommendations to strengthen coordinated, multidisciplinary, and child-centred responses among States Parties, AU organs, RECs, National Human Rights Institutions, civil society organisations, communities and other relevant stakeholders.
This upcoming PSC meeting will therefore provide an opportunity to follow up on the implementation of these decisions and provide a platform for the Council to reflect on the conclusions of the Banjul Process, which took place in December 2023. During this ministerial, high-level session, participants agreed on the imperative to ‘develop a Continental Child Justice Framework addressing both punitive measures and, as well as the recourse and restitution elements for child survivors.’
The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC is expected to condemn all attacks against children and their abduction and recruitment by armed groups and to strictly comply with International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law. Taking note of her appointment in February 2026, Council is also likely to emphasise the imperative of providing the office of Jainaba Jagne, the AU Special Envoy on CAAC, with the necessary financial, human and technical resources to enable her to discharge her mandate effectively. It may also reiterate its previous calls on Member States who have not yet done so to sign, ratify and domesticate the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and other international instruments, such as the Safe Schools Declaration and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child with regard to the inclusion of children in armed conflicts. It may also encourage Member States to integrate mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), school feeding, water and sanitation (WASH), and child protection referral pathways into education responses. The PSC may also reiterate the need for Member States, RECs/RMs, and the AU Commission to mainstream child protection in early warning mechanisms and conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peacemaking and peace-building processes, as well as in post-conflict reconstruction and development.