In 2025, One Civilian Was Killed in Conflict Every 14 Minutes

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In May, the United Nations recognized Protection of Civilians Week, marked by the release of the Secretary-General's annual report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict and a high-level Security Council debate examining how the international system can better cooperate to protect the most vulnerable in modern war. 

The numbers were bleak.

In 2025, the UN documented more than 37,000 civilian deaths across 20 armed conflicts — roughly one civilian killed every 14 minutes. Aid workers are dying in record numbers, with a startling rise in attacks on healthcare facilities. Drones and artificial intelligence are transforming warfare faster than international law can adapt. 

“This is not a crisis of norms,†Pakistan's Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad told the Council during the May 20 debate. “It is a crisis of compliance, accountability and political will.â€Â 

The Secretary-General's report went further.   

“The architecture built over generations to safeguard civilians and a minimum of humanity during conflict is under attack,†he wrote. “The rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force, often in plain sight.â€Â 

“The rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force, often in plain sight.â€

António Guterres, UN Secretary General

Behind the Numbers 

In Sudan, more than 11,000 civilians were killed, many in Darfur and Kordofan. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), at least 3,800 civilians died amid escalating violence. Ukraine saw civilian deaths climb to more than 2,500, with another 12,000 injured — a 31 percent increase over the previous year. 

Much of the destruction stemmed from explosive weapons used in populated areas, notably targeting hospitals, schools, water systems, electrical grids and telecommunications infrastructure. 

“These are not simply physical structures,†Liberia's Ambassador Baba Sillah told the Council. “They are the systems that sustain civilian life.â€Â Â 

Hospitals Under Attack 

Healthcare is particularly vulnerable.  

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Security Council Resolution 2286, which was intended to strengthen protections for healthcare workers and medical facilities during armed conflict. Instead, the situation has only worsened in the last decade.  

Since 2018, the World Health Organization has documented more than 9,800 attacks on healthcare facilities across 26 conflict settings — nearly three attacks a day. In 2025 alone, the UN recorded 1,356 attacks on healthcare facilities across 18 conflicts, resulting in nearly 2,000 deaths. Sudan accounted for the overwhelming majority of healthcare-related fatalities.  

Hunger as a Weapon of War 

The report also warns that starvation tactics are becoming increasingly normalized, with conflict and insecurity driving acute food insecurity for 147 million people across 19 countries and territories. For the first time in two decades, the Secretary-General formally confirmed two famines occurring simultaneously: Sudan and Gaza. In Sudan, restrictions on humanitarian access hit hardest in El Fasher and Kadugli. In Gaza, nearly one-third of the population is facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.  

Targeting Humanitarian Workers 

Perhaps no statistic shook officials more than the continuing rise in aid worker deaths. At least 332 humanitarians were reported killed globally in 2025, marking the third consecutive year of record fatalities.  

Gaza became the deadliest environment in the world for humanitarian personnel. Between October 2023 and the end of 2025, more than 579 aid workers were killed, including 388 UN staff members — what the report described as “the highest death toll in the history of the United Nations.â€Â Â 

2025 was the deadliest year for UN staff in the history of the organization.

New Era of Warfare 

The report also warned that artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cyber operations and drone warfare are reshaping conflict faster than international institutions can adapt.  

Drone attacks alone increased by at least 4,000 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to the report. In Ukraine, first-person-view drones became one of the leading causes of civilian casualties during some months. In Sudan, drones struck densely populated neighborhoods, hospitals, markets, and universities.  

Drone attacks increased by at least 4,000 percent between 2020 and 2024.

The growing military use of artificial intelligence also drew concern. “In Ukraine,†the report stated, “artificial intelligence has reportedly been used to support target identification and inform military operations.â€Â Â 

The Role of Peacekeeping 

The scale of the crisis naturally raises difficult questions about how the international community should respond. For many, UN peacekeeping remains one of the few mechanisms capable of offering protection for civilians in conflict. 

In eastern Congo, for example, MONUSCO continues sheltering civilians fleeing armed groups while supporting humanitarian access. In Abyei, UN peacekeepers helped facilitate local dialogue that prevented renewed communal violence. And in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL has played an essential role helping civilians during the ongoing war.  

None of these missions are perfect, and each function under difficult political and operational constraints. But the civilian protection mandates they enforce emerged from hard-won lessons of the 1990s. 

The genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia exposed the limits of traditional peacekeeping missions designed primarily to monitor ceasefires between states, not protect civilians caught inside collapsing internal conflicts. Those failures triggered a profound reassessment within the UN that continues to shape peacekeeping today. 

In 1999, the Security Council formally elevated civilian protection into a central international security issue through Resolutions 1265 and 1270. Resolution 1270, which established the UN mission in Sierra Leone, gave peacekeepers one of the first explicit mandates to protect civilians “under imminent threat of physical violence.†Over the following decades, protection of civilians was embedded in nearly all operations. 

Today, more than 95 percent of UN peacekeepers serve in missions with clear civilian protection mandates that combine military patrols with human rights monitoring, humanitarian coordination, women's protection advisers and child protection specialists. 

This shift has made a seismic difference. As a November 2021 Foreign Affairs article explains, “Decades of academic research has demonstrated that peacekeeping not only works at stopping conflicts, but works better than anything else experts know,†authors write. “It succeeds at protecting civilian lives and reducing sexual and gender-based violence… at a very low cost.â€Â 

“Peacekeeping not only works at stopping conflicts, but works better than anything else experts know… at protecting civilian lives and reducing sexual and gender-based violence.â€

The Limits of Peacekeeping 

Mandates alone cannot protect civilians, however, a point made clear in the Secretary-General's report. Missions depend on political backing, sustainable and predictable financing and a realistic alignment between expectations and resources — all of which are increasingly under strain.  

UN liquidity shortfalls, driven largely from U.S. funding cuts, have forced nearly all UN peacekeeping operations to implement significant reductions beginning in late 2025 that have constrained civilian protection efforts. Last year, the Trump Administration paid just half of what it had committed to peacekeeping, forcing over ten thousand troops to return home. This resulted in fewer bases, fewer patrols and more civilians caught in the crossfire.

This has hit especially hard in places like the DRC, where just 17,000 MONUSCO troops are expected to cover a country of more than 82 million people across 2.3 million square kilometers.  

Meanwhile, global military spending reached an estimated $2.7 trillion in 2024. According to the Secretary-General's report, just one percent of that amount could fully fund the world's entire humanitarian appeal. 

Global military spending reached an estimated $2.7 trillion in 2024.

So Where Does That Leave POC?  

There are few easy solutions. But what is clear is that while civilian suffering intensifies, the world is becoming dangerously accustomed to it. And while the mechanisms to protect civilians exist — and in many respects, have been strengthened over the past two decades — those systems are being steadily eroded in practice by impunity, shrinking humanitarian budgets and a growing willingness to selectively apply international law. 

As the Secretary-General warned in his report, eighty years after the UN was founded to save humanity from the scourge of war, the rule of law is increasingly being replaced by the “law of brutality.â€

And that doesn't just endanger civilians caught in conflict, but “endangers everyone, everywhere.â€

Watch to learn more.

 

Header photo taken in Bentiu, South Sudan; credit to UN Photo/UNMISS/JC McIlwaine