The rationale for this is that 50 km is arguably a reasonable distance within which conflict events could be expected to impact children’s daily lives. In other words, we define children affected by conflict as any child who lives less than 50 km away from one or more such conflict events. We draw a 50km radius around each of these conflict events and estimate the number of children that live in these areas using population data from CIESIN and the UN. The UCDP Georeferenced Events Dataset (UCDP GED) provides detailed information on the location of each separate conflict event or incidence of organized violence in conflicts around the world, including geographical coordinates. In order to provide estimates for the number of children living in conflict zones, we need to isolate these areas.

Most conflicts take place in limited geographical areas within countries. How we measure children affected by conflict Hence, although the number of children living in conflict zones appears to have decreased slightly from 2020 to 2021, there is not much reason to celebrate or lower the attention. Hence, next year’s update with figures for 2022 will likely see an increase again in the number of children affected, at least in Europe. prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, this annual update is for the period 1990–2021, i.e. However, it also seems that the number of children living in areas of more intense conflicts has increased. More specifically, the figure from 2021 represents a decrease of approximately 6%, or 29 million children less than in 2020. For the first time since 2013, we found that the overall number of children living in conflict zones seems to have decreased slightly. In 2021 our estimates suggest that 449 million children, or more than 1 out of 6 were living in a conflict zone. The report is based on PRIO’s sixth annual mapping of children in armed conflict covering the period 1990-2021.

Children and armed conflict report