Save the Children has responded to a new UN report by highlighting that Israel was responsible for at least one in four of the world’s violations against children in 2025. And it stressed that, because only a minority of violations receive verification:
these figures are just the tip of the iceberg
With this in mind, the charity called on the UK government to:
end its complicity and suspend all arms sales to Israel, suspend the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement, and hold all perpetrators of grave violations to account.
The UN's latest Children and Armed Conflict report has found Israeli forces were the biggest perpetrators of verified grave violations against children globally, and Israeli armed and security forces were responsible for one in four of all verified violations in 2025.
And these… pic.twitter.com/qIZaMQWDp7
— Save the Children UK (@savechildrenuk) June 23, 2026
The UN report on children and armed conflict stated that:
In 2025, violations against children in armed conflict reached unprecedented levels. The United Nations verified 38,558 grave violations
The Israeli apartheid state was the leading global perpetrator of such violations. Of 12,445 violations in occupied Palestinian territory (including Israel), the UN attributed 9,465 to Israeli government forces. The verification of responsibility for 2,518 more cases, however, is ongoing. So the number Israel was responsible for could still rise.
The country with the second highest number of violations was the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 4,114.
Save the Children noted that new “high-tech explosive weapons” were behind the rise in child conflict deaths to at least 6,266 in 2025. And it added that the overall number of children suffering violations (24,174) was:
the highest number since the protection of Children in Armed Conflict (CAAC) mandate was established 30 years ago
Israel also contributed to making 2025 the first time in CAAC’s mandate that:
government forces were the main perpetrators of grave violations against children
Israel’s unprecedented crimes against children are a moral outrage
June also saw an independent UN inquiry add to the consensus of expert voices calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. The inquiry’s report stated that Israel’s deliberate targeting of children across occupied Palestine had resulted in genocide. And Save the Children’s Ahmad Alhendawi responded by saying:
The sheer scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations reported by the Commission of Inquiry have resulted in unprecedented numbers of deaths, injuries, and psychological trauma among children in Gaza and the West Bank
He added that:
Across our programmes in Gaza, we treat children who are malnourished due to a policy of deliberate starvation, children mentally distressed by the horrors of war, children injured by bullets and bombs and shrapnel. In the West Bank, we provide remedial education services to children who have faced relentless attacks on their schools, and mental health services to formerly detained children and children impacted by military raids, settler violence and displacement.
The charity urged world governments not just to end arms transfers to Israel and other forms of complicity “immediately”, but also to:
intervene to prevent atrocity crimes from continuing throughout the occupied Palestinian territory
Amid leadership changes within a UK government deeply complicit in Israel’s genocide, pressure is mounting on the incoming leader to change course. Although potential leader Andy Burnham has a history of supporting the zionist state, Israel-critics like Green leader Zack Polanski say cooperation will only be possible if support for Israel stops.
Even some aggressively pro-Israel, right–wing supporters of Burnham have urged the Labour government to admit its mistakes in response to the Gaza genocide. John McTernan, for example, has called for Labour to admit openly that:
what we did over Gaza was morally wrong.
At this stage, that’s the bare minimum. Because Israel has been committing unprecedented, genocidal crimes against children. And our government has not just offered its support. It has also shamefully cracked down on anti-genocide activism. This is the moral outrage of our time. And nothing short of firm action will do.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
