This report is written by 2025 McCain Global Leader Cecilia Polizzi. The McCain Institute is a nonpartisan organization that is part of Arizona State University. The views expressed in this report are solely those of the author and do not represent an opinion of the McCain Institute.
Coinciding with 30 years since Graça Machel’s 1996 report, The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, Cecilia Polizzi’s report, The Impact of Terrorism and Violent Extremism on Children: Human Rights, Democracy and Global Security, reframes terrorism and extremism not only as global security challenges, but as significant tests of democratic integrity and human and children’s rights in the twenty-first century.
Extremist actors across the ideological spectrum have long recruited and radicalized minors to strengthen their operational capabilities, ensure the continuity of their movements, and preserve their ideological paradigms. In conflict and near-conflict zones, groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates exploit systemic inequalities, poverty, structural governance gaps, and social disenfranchisement to co-opt tens of thousands of children into terror and terror-related operations, severely undermining human and children’s rights.
Technological innovation, while transformative in many ways, has amplified this challenge beyond geographic hotspots, providing extremist actors with efficient means to operate anonymously and transnationally across mainstream social media platforms, fringe forums, gaming environments, encrypted messaging apps, and the dark web. Extremist ideologies now find fertile ground online, where children and young people comprise a large portion of internet and social media users. According to United Nations and ITU statistics, up to 80% of these demographic cohorts may be exposed daily to violent propaganda campaigns, placing them at heightened risk of online radicalization. Exposure does not imply that all children subjected to it will ultimately radicalize or engage in violence. However, the digital landscape has become, recognizably, a primary vector for radicalization, recruitment, incitement to violence, as well as the mobilization of youth for terror-related purposes.
Beyond immediate security concerns, youth involvement in terrorism and violent extremism exacerbates social polarization, undermines social cohesion, jeopardizes democratic resilience, and generates a transgenerational challenge. Yet, despite the increasing involvement of minors in terrorism-related contexts, a persistent deficit in integrated knowledge and strategic intervention constrains the ability to design and implement effective counter-extremism measures while adequately protecting the rights and well-being of children.
This white paper seeks to advance a deeper understanding of the impact of terrorism and extremism on children and youth across three interdependent axes: human and children’s rights, democracy, and global security. It reframes the issue not solely as a counter terrorism challenge, but as a defining test of rights protection and democratic integrity in the twenty-first century. It aims to catalyze informed international dialogue and to provide a blueprint for policy innovation and coordinated, human rights-aligned action.
To read the full report, click HERE.