YAMBIO, South Sudan, 18 April 2018 – More than 200 children were released by armed groups in South Sudan on Tuesday. This was the second release of children in a series, supported by UNICEF, that will see almost 1,000 children released from the ranks of armed groups in the coming months.

A first-ever online database on child soldiers, launched today (21 February 2018), maps the shocking scale of child exploitation by armed forces and non-state armed groups around the world.

November, 2017 - We have the tools and resources to protect children better, but we have failed to do so.

KINSHASA/DAKAR/GENEVA/NEW YORK, 9 June 2017 - More than 150,000 children are missing out on school as violence and attacks against civilian populations continue in the Greater Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

BANGUI/DAKAR/NEW YORK, 1 June 2017 – Two planes carrying vital supplies for thousands of families displaced by violence in the Central African Republic were finally able to land earlier today in Bangassou, UNICEF said, after weeks of intensified conflict had blocked the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the southeast.

DAKAR / NEW YORK / GENEVA, 12 April 2017 – The number of children used in ‘suicide’ attacks in the Lake Chad conflict has surged to 27 in the first quarter of 2017, compared to nine over the same period last year, UNICEF said in a new report released today.

NAIROBI, 23 March 2017 – Armed groups in the Central African Republic have occupied, looted, and damaged school buildings, preventing children from getting an education, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

8 January 2017 - Sunday marks a 1,000 days since 276 Nigerian girls were abducted from a school in the country's northeast by Boko Haram fighters.

5 December 2016 - The trial of Dominic Ongwen, a senior member of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, opens on Tuesday before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Many horrors will be recounted, but the case also throws up deep ethical questions: is a child, brutalised and turned into a killer, fully responsible for his or her actions? If the abuses of government forces aren’t also being investigated, at what point does it become victor’s justice?

14 November 2016 - Staying in school protects girls from recruitment and other grave violations by armed groups, says Child Soldiers International in a new report published today. Research conducted by the organisation in 2016 shows that many girls who joined armed groups in eastern DRC did so because they had been forced to drop out of school.