This web map was created using the following open-source applications, plugins and platforms:
- GitHub repository
- Leaflet library
- LibreOffice (version 24.8.1)
- Natural Earth datasets (scales 1:110m for static map and 1:10m for web map)
- QGIS 3.34 ltr version
- QGIS2web plugin
I highlight how these initiatives help expand access for users who cannot afford them and who live in peripheral areas. Donating and supporting these applications indirectly means supporting projects like this, so I encourage you to support them.
This is a thematic map showing the last decade's performance of Six Grave Violations Against Children in Armed Conflict, based on OSRGS-CAAC Annual reports from 2014 to 2024.
The method involved extracting data from UN annual reports into tabular format (.csv), recording only the verified cases in each year. Then uploading these values to QGIS, creating two maps from Natural Earth spatial datasets, a static choropleth map containing the Six Grave Violations in accumulated values from 2014 to 2024 and a more detailed web map containing the accumulated values for each variable, with the assistance of the QGIS2web plugin to export to Leaflet library (based on JS, HTML and CSS languages).
Twenty-six countries were considered in this analysis, which are: Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Iraq, Israel & Palestine, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Ukraine, and Yemen.
The choropleth was determined by the following expression:
- y: Year index, ranging from 2014 to 2024
- Ky: Number of cases of killing and maiming of children in a given year
- Ry: Number of cases of recruitment and use of children in a given year
- Sy: Number of cases of sexual violence against children in a given year
- Ay: Number of cases of abduction of children in a given year
- Hy: Number of attacks against schools and hospitals in a given year
- Dy: Number of cases of denial of humanitarian access in a given year
- Summation from 2014 to 2024: Indicates that values are accumulated across all years in this period
- Child Population (2024): Total number of children in the population for the year 2024
Finally, the web map was hosted on GitHub repository and enabled to be accessed for everyone by this link.
The choropleth map is represented by a color range from blues to purples, where blue shows less than 10% of violations per child (classified as "very mild"), while purple represents more than 90% of violations per child (classified as "very severe"), the grey color depicts the missing values, meaning no data are available for these countries or unsatisfactory values to be represented.
Avoiding to overpopulate the web map, attacks against schools and hospitals, sexual violence against children and child abduction data points display only the ten most affected areas for each topic in the map, while the denial of humanitarian access displays only the five most affected areas during the same period. The killing and maiming and recruitment and use are depicted as stacked circles, ranging from less than 1,000 to more than 6,000 children affected, presented side by side to facilitate comparison.
Clicking on each country will return a country summary, displaying a popup containing the following data:
percentage of six grave violations;child population;recruitment and use;killing and maiming;sexual violence against children;attacks against schools and hospitals;child abduction;denial of humanitarian access;total of violations.
During this period, Israel, Somalia, Syrian Arab Republic, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Yemen have recorded more than 100 violations per child. Among them, the three most affected countries were Israel, Somalia and Afghanistan, which recorded more than 30,000 violations for each.
Some countries lead in at least three violations simultaneously, such as Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Somalia, leading the following violations 'child abduction', 'attacks against schools and hospitals' and 'sexual violence against children'. These countries alongside Israel and Syrian Arab Republic recorded the highest numbers of 'recruitment and use' violations (more than 7,000 children recruited and used each), which might indicate the prevalence of these aggressions over the course of time in these areas.
Following this, Afghanistan, Israel, Mali, South Sudan and Yemen were leading the denial of humanitarian access. Among them, Afghanistan, Israel, Yemen, alongside Syrian Arab Republic and Somalia were recording the highest numbers of killing and maiming against children (more than 8,000 children killed and maimed for each country).
The two countries most affected by sexual violence against children were concentrated in Southern Africa, namely Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, reaching more than 2,000 cases. Followed by Central African Republic, Nigeria, South Sudan and Sudan in North Africa, registering more than 600 children abused for each country over this time.
Although this project aims to facilitate the understanding of 'Children in Armed Conflict'(CAC), this depiction has limitations you should be aware of. UN Annual Reports may not reflect the full scope of the violence suffered by CAC, given that inaccessible areas affected by armed conflict and war might hide the real number of these violations due to underreported cases, which means this is a partial representation of the actual violence.
Moreover, I preferred to include only verified cases in each year reported, thus I did not use underreported cases in previous years registered later nor unverified cases, which means it might reduce the total number of cases as well, for instance this is the case for India, which has not presented a relevant amount to be presented here, although those violations perpetrated against children are visible on country summary.
Despite the fact that CAC report provides the number of children deprived of liberty and detention of children, I did not use these numbers, preserving the concept of "Six Grave Violations"(killing and maiming, recruitment and use, sexual violence against children, child abduction, attacks against schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access).
Lastly, there are some topics to be considered that contribute to the overall picture of this violence not explored in this study, which I consider a good start to conduct further research, such as filtering data by: gender; location; aggressors (e.g. state actors versus non-state actors); children deprived of liberty and detention of children; weapons used and causes of death.