Speaking at the UN Security Council meeting on Children and Armed Conflict on 24 June 2026, Jennifer MacNaughtan used the UK's intervention to restate a straightforward position: grave violations against children must stop, parties to conflict must meet their duties under international law, and child protection must remain central to Security Council work. The text published by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office was brief, but it organised the issue around three tests: protection from violence, protection of education and accountability for sexual violence. (gov.uk)
Gaza sat at the centre of the statement. The government cited 9,465 grave violations against children attributed to Israeli armed and security forces, described grave violations against Israeli children as equally unacceptable, and said the overall effect of the war on children was intolerable. It also raised concern about hundreds of Palestinian children reportedly held in Israeli detention for months, in many cases without charge. For Policy Wire readers, the significance is the way the UK grouped direct violence, detention practice and wider legal compliance in a single passage. The intervention was not framed as a general humanitarian appeal; it was framed as a demand that all parties comply fully with international law. (gov.uk)
The same approach was applied to Sudan and Ukraine. On Sudan, the published text linked displacement, loss of schooling and exposure to violence, reflecting the way child protection failures compound each other during a worsening humanitarian emergency. On Ukraine, the UK accused Russia of continuing attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure, including attacks affecting children, and of refusing to return more than 20,000 forcibly deported Ukrainian children. Taken together, those references show how the UK is using the children and armed conflict agenda to connect humanitarian protection with questions of state conduct, detention, deportation and civilian harm. That matters because it keeps child protection inside mainstream diplomatic and accountability work rather than treating it as a secondary welfare issue. (gov.uk)
Education formed the second pillar of the statement. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office text argued that attacks on schools do more than interrupt learning: they deny a legal right and expose children to higher risks of recruitment and exploitation. The UK used the intervention to point to its support for Education Cannot Wait and the Global Partnership for Education, while also calling on parties to avoid deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on schools. The additional push for full implementation of the Safe Schools Declaration is important in practical terms. For governments and parties to conflict alike, the issue is not only whether schools reopen, but whether education settings are kept out of the cycle of attack, military use and fear that drives children away from learning altogether. (gov.uk)
The third theme was conflict-related sexual violence against children. The UK said this violence falls disproportionately on girls and identified South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti as settings where sexual violence is being used alongside other grave violations. The statement paired that warning with a commitment to support child survivors, child witnesses and children born of rape in war. This part of the intervention matters because it went beyond condemnation. The published wording pressed for prevention, protection and survivor-centred responses, while also stating that perpetrators should be held to account. For officials and service providers, that is a reminder that justice and safeguarding have to move together. (gov.uk)
The closing section returned to the UN's Children and Armed Conflict mandate. The UK called on all listed parties to work constructively with the United Nations and the Special Representative so that action plans can be agreed and implemented to end further grave violations against children. That phrasing is technical, but it has a specific meaning inside the UN system. According to the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, action plans are written, signed and time-bound commitments between the UN and listed parties, designed to address named violations and move conduct towards compliance. Read in that context, the UK's statement was not only rhetorical. It pointed back to a monitored process with defined expectations and a route to measurable change. (gov.uk)
As a piece of diplomacy, the intervention did not attempt to cover every conflict setting in equal depth. Instead, it used Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti to show the breadth of the current agenda: killing and maiming, detention, school attacks, displacement, deportation and sexual violence. The practical effect is to set out the benchmarks the UK wants attached to Security Council discussion on children in war. For diplomats, humanitarian agencies and education partners, the message is clear: compliance with international law, protection of schools and credible accountability measures remain the tests against which parties to conflict will continue to be judged. (gov.uk)