Children in need
Unicef: Record number of children live in conflict areas
Updated 12/28/2024 – 8:10 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
According to new Unicef data, the situation for children worldwide has never been as bad as in 2024. More than 473 million currently live in conflict areas. Trend: continuing to rise.
According to the UN Children’s Fund Unicef, more children than ever before are living in conflict areas or have been forcibly expelled from their homes. The organization reports this, citing the latest available data and global trends. According to this, a good 473 million children live in conflict areas – more than one in six children worldwide. According to the Global Peace Index, the number of conflicts is the highest since the Second World War.
The proportion of children worldwide living in conflict areas has doubled – from around ten percent in the 1990s to almost 19 percent today, as Unicef also reports. They were killed and injured, had to drop out of school, lacked vital vaccinations or suffered from severe malnutrition. And the trend is worrying: the number of children affected by conflict is expected to continue to rise, it said.
“By almost every measure, 2024 was one of the worst years for children in conflict situations in Unicef’s 78-year history – both in terms of the number of children affected and the impact on their lives,” said Unicef Executive Director Catherine Russell. The likelihood of not being able to go to school, suffering from malnutrition and being driven from their own home is significantly higher for children in conflict areas than for those growing up in a peaceful place. “This must not become the new normal.”
According to Unicef, 47.2 million children were displaced due to conflict and violence in the annual count up to the end of 2023. The trends for 2024 therefore point to a further increase in displacement as various conflicts continue to escalate, including in Haiti, Lebanon, Myanmar, Palestine and Sudan.
Even if all the figures for 2024 are not yet available, Unicef is expecting a bleak outcome given current developments. Thousands of children were killed and injured in the Gaza Strip alone, and the UN counted more confirmed child victims in Ukraine in the first nine months of 2024 than in the entire year of 2023.
