The UN Security Council has adopted a name-and-shame resolution to monitor nations or rebel groups that kill, maim and sexually abuse children in war zones or recruit them as soldiers.
The resolution reaffirms earlier commitments that the council would consider imposing targeted sanctions, such as a ban on arms exports and imports, against parties that violate international law on the rights and protection of children in armed conflict.
During the last decade, two million children have been killed during an armed conflict and another six million have been disabled or injured, UN figures show.
The measure had been delayed since February, with China and others arguing that countries not yet on the 15-member body's agenda could not be monitored, council members said.
In a compromise, the resolution this year would monitor nations or rebel groups operating in Burundi, Ivory Coast, Congo Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Sudan.
In 2006, the monitoring would expand to Colombia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Uganda, countries not on the council's agenda.
Yet Olara Otunnu, the UN special envoy for children and armed conflict, said: "It is important to stress that the information compiled and transmitted in monitoring reports is only useful if it serves as (a) trigger for action."
Mr Otunnu, who proposed the system, foresees a UN-led task force, drawn largely from officials already in the country, to be established in phases, that would encourage the council to take action against the perpetrators.
"It is for the first time saying it is not enough to condemn," Mr Otunnu said. "It isn't enough to have rules and standards and resolutions and conventions. We must set up in place a system that can deliver on compliance."
A Security Council working group would review how well the monitoring and reporting works. Unusual for the United Nations, Mr Otunnu in February drew up a report of child combatants with a list of offenders, both government and insurgent rebel groups.
Among them are the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the Janjaweed of Sudan and the Communist Party of Nepal. His report reviewed developments in a dozen countries where children were killed, maimed, attacked in schools and hospitals, raped and abducted during an armed conflict.
Concerned at the delay in adopting the resolution, a group of Western nations told the council in a letter it was high time to fulfill its promises on protecting children.