No more broken promises: Lebanon’s children need a ceasefire that is enforced

This is the second ceasefire of this war. UNIFIL documented more than 10,000 Israeli airspace violations and 1,400 military operations inside Lebanese territory between November 2024 and February 2026, near-daily strikes throughout the first ceasefire. Israeli forces never withdrew from the five positions they held inside Lebanon as the deal required. In October 2025, the UN condemned the government of Israel’s international law violations and called for independent investigations and accountability. Those calls went unanswered.

Since 2 March, UNICEF reports children being killed or maimed at a rate of roughly twelve every single day. More than a million people have been driven from their homes, among them an estimated 390,000 children, while over 435 schools have been turned into shelters.

War Child calls on all guarantors of this ceasefire to make it mean something: enforce it with consequences for violations; ensure full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory; and end all violence; and ensure families in southern Lebanon can access humanitarian assistance. Donors must commit sustained, large-scale resources - across years, not months - to meet the mental health, educational, and child protection needs of a generation shaped by repeated displacement.

There can be no durable peace without accountability, War Child calls on states to act on the UN experts' demand for an independent, impartial investigation of violations committed against civilians in Lebanon, and to hold all parties to account under international humanitarian law. The pattern across this region is the same; violations documented, condemned, and then met with impunity. That impunity is precisely why each ceasefire fails to hold and the war resumes.