Italy pays particular attention to the protection of children in armed conflicts (Children and Armed Conflict – CAAC) and has co-chaired with Belgium since 2022 a special “Group of Friends” (GoF) in which Albania, Norway and Poland also take part, aimed at maintaining a high level of attention on the consequences of conflicts on children and strengthening the role of the OSCE in this area.
Among the most recent initiatives, the Group of Friends “Children and Armed Conflict” organized in November 2025 an introductory course on the mandate of the UN Special Representative for the CAAC agenda (SRSG-CAAC), which saw a wide and participatory participation of delegates from the political, military and human dimensions of the OSCE, confirming the breadth and transversality of the theme.
The initiative pursued a threefold objective: to strengthen awareness of the CAAC agenda and mandate through a deepening of the international regulatory framework on the rights of the child; Explain the operational tools and current limits available for the fulfilment of the mandate of the SRSG-CAAC, as well as explore concrete opportunities for co-operation between the OSCE and the SRSG-CAAC office.
Several concrete initiatives have been proposed to strengthen the integration of the CAAC agenda into the OSCE, including: inclusion of the topic on the agenda of the Permanent Council; integration of the theme in the three Committees (political-military, economic-environmental and human) and in the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC); inclusion of experts on child protection in the lists of the Moscow Mechanism; adoption of specific mandates for OSCE field missions with resources dedicated to child protection and integration of the theme into the Warsaw Conference on the Human Dimension (WHDC).