This report explores children at risk of recruitment and use by armed forces or armed groups. There has been a rise in the number of verified incidents of children recruited and used by armed forces and groups, and the number of groups recruiting children has also increased. In three countries – Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen – the vast majority of children in conflict zones are deemed at risk of recruitment.

Key findings:

• The share of children living in conflict zones who are at risk of being recruited and used by armed forces or armed groups has tripled from less than 5% in 1990 (99 million children) to more than 14% in 2020 (337 million children)
• The number of children living in conflict zones at risk of recruitment increased by more than 2 percentage points from 2019 to 2020.
• One in eight children – 337 million children – live in a conflict zone with at least one battle-related death and where at least one actor who recruited and used children was active
• The number of non-state actors who recruited children increased from 85 in 2019 to 110 in 2020, while the number of government actors who recruited fell from 25 in 2019 to 22 in 2020.
• Approximately 1.265 billion children (54% of all children globally) were living in one of 39 countries where one or more conflict actors were reported to have recruited children.