Stop the War on Children 2020
Gender Matters
This is the third report in Save the Children's 'Stop the War on Children' series. It reveals shocking trends in the threats to the safety and wellbeing of children living in areas impacted by conflict. In 2018, verified grave violations against children reached a record high.
415 million children worldwide are living in a conflict zone, including 149 million children living in high-intensity conflict zones where more than 1,000 battle-related deaths occur in a year.
Overall, the number of children living in conflict zones is highest in Africa, with 170 million in total. Proportionately, the Middle East has the highest share with almost 1 out of 3 children in the region living in conflict zones.
Challenges in monitoring, reporting and verifying violations – due to limited access to affected areas, security concerns and sensitivity associated with violations – mean that the true scale of violations affecting children is under-reported. The influence of gender on certain violations, such as sexual violence against boys or the recruitment and use of girls, can result in even lower rates of reporting.
There are particular challenges in understanding and responding to rights violations experienced by children of diverse gender identities. Reporting mechanisms, when they are disaggregated at all, continue to rely on binary data representations of gender. As a result, the experiences of children of all genders and the full impact of violations against them are unknown.