Close to one child in five worldwide today lives in a conflict zone or is fleeing one, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Behind the figure are classrooms moved down into basements, where children learn to count between two alerts, and lines of families walking towards a border with whatever they could carry. As a candidate for the office of UN Secretary-General, President Macky Sall wants the protection of these children to bind every party at war.

The most ratified treaty in the world. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, has been ratified by almost every state. No other text has gathered such agreement, and it is in war zones that it is most often violated.

Six grave violations. Each year the United Nations records children killed or maimed, recruited, abducted, subjected to sexual violence, denied humanitarian aid, or whose school and hospital were attacked. Year after year, the verified cases number in the tens of thousands.

School as shelter. As long as it stays open in wartime, a school protects children from recruitment and forced labour, and keeps a generation able to learn. An international declaration commits states to keep schools free of any military use; its application remains uneven.

The Secretary-General's annual list. The report the Secretary-General devotes each year to children and armed conflict names the forces and groups that kill or maim children, or recruit them. That list is read in the capitals, and governments have lobbied to be taken off it. A Secretary-General can draw it up on the facts verified by field teams alone, and keep every listed party on it until the violations stop. Macky Sall makes it a rule of his candidacy.

A rule drawn from experience. It comes from twelve years as head of state and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. The same experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations: peace, security and development conceived together; a renewed multilateralism; stronger governance of the Organization.

Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Secretary-General's annual reports on children and armed conflict are public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net