CHILDREN experienced the highest number of “grave violations” in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, the UN children’s agency said on Wednesday.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said that conflicts in the Palestinian occupied territories, Congo and Somalia were placing the most children in peril.

Unicef also expressed particular concern about the plight of children in Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, where Russia has been put on a UN blacklist.

“Grave violations” include the recruitment and use of children by combatants, killings and injuries, sexual violence, abductions and attacks on schools and hospitals.

Unicef’s deputy executive director Omar Abdi told the UN security council that the more than 27,000 grave violations, up from 24,000 the previous year, is the highest number verified by the UN since its monitoring reports began in 2005. 

The number of conflict situations “of concern” was also the highest, at 26.

Since the report, Mr Abdi said, a serious conflict has erupted in Sudan, where over one million children have been displaced by violent conflict and the UN has received reports that hundreds have been killed and injured.

He also said Unicef expects an increase in Palestinian children affected due to recent escalations in violence.

Governments and parties to conflicts are not fulfilling their commitments to protect children, and “meaningful and unambiguous action” is needed, Mr Abdi said.

In his yearly report to the council late last month, secretary-general Antonio Guterres put Russian forces on the UN’s annual blacklist of countries that violate children’s rights in conflict.

But, in a demonstration of double standards, Mr Guterres did not put Israel on the blacklist for the grave violations they carried out against 1,139 Palestinian children including 54 killings last year. 

Instead, he said the UN welcomed Israel’s “identification of practical measures including those proposed by the UN” to protect children.