‘Violations Of Children Have Reached Alarming Proportions’

Ongoing violations of children have reached alarming proportions, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has stated again.

The agency said in a release that US$7.66 billion is urgently required to provide life-saving assistance to 73 million children.

These include 37 million girls and over 9 million children with disabilities – across 133 countries and territories next year

The agency cited surging conflicts, rising hunger, global funding cuts, and collapsing basic services as drivers of the ongoing grave violations of children in different regions of the world.

It says this against the backdrop of UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children 2026 (HAC), adding that across every region, children caught in emergencies are facing overlapping crises that are growing in scale and complexity.

Escalating conflicts are driving mass displacement and exposing children to grave violations at the highest levels ever recorded”, UNICEF says, adding that attacks on schools and hospitals continue unabated, while verified cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence against children are rising sharply.

The agency says that in many crises, children and the aid workers attempting to reach them are being deliberately targeted.

“Around the world, children caught in conflict, disaster, displacement and economic turmoil continue to face extraordinary challenges,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“Their lives are being shaped by forces far beyond their control: violence, the threat of famine, intensifying climate shocks, and the widespread collapse of essential services.”

It said the increasing cases of violations of children is taking place amidst deterioration in the global humanitarian funding environment in 2025.

It adds that funding cuts by donor governments are already limiting UNICEF’s ability to reach millions of children in dire need.

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And that across its nutrition programming alone, a 72 per cent funding gap in 2025 forced cuts in 20 priority countries – reducing planned targets from more than 42 million to over 27 million women and children.

“In education, a shortfall of US$745 million has left millions more children at risk of losing access to learning, protection and stability.

“For child protection, rising violations coincide with shrinking resources, threatening programmes for survivors of sexual violence, children recruited or used by armed groups, and those requiring urgent mental health and psychosocial support.

“Severe funding shortfalls are placing UNICEF’s life-saving programs under immense strain,” said Russell.

“Across our operations, frontline teams are being forced into impossible decisions: focusing limited supplies and services on children in some places over others, decreasing the frequency of services children receive, or scaling back interventions that children depend on to survive”, he states.