Overview
- UNICEF’s year-end assessment finds nearly one in five children now live in crisis or conflict settings, the highest proportion recorded and almost double the mid-1990s level.
- The UN verified 41,370 grave violations of children’s rights in 2024, a 25% rise from 2023, and UNICEF sees no sign of improvement through 2025.
- Two war-driven famines were confirmed in 2025 in parts of Sudan and the Gaza Strip; Gaza’s famine designation was later lifted, yet about 100,000 children there remain at high acute food-insecurity risk.
- In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 35,000 cases of sexualized violence against children were registered in the first nine months of 2025, alongside the country’s worst cholera outbreak in 25 years.
- UNICEF cites severe global malnutrition—about 43 million children under five acutely malnourished and 150 million chronically malnourished—and urges greater government and donor support, calling current outcomes a failure of global policy.