The COVID-19 pandemic has had a far-ranging impact. As societies struggled to minimize infection, questions arose regarding the consequences for children. Initial research reported the urgent need for child protective services worldwide to adapt existing policies and practices to protect children from maltreatment during this time, which is the rationale for the current systematic literature review. This review examined studies published in peer-reviewed journals from March 2020 to October 2020 on child maltreatment (CM) in the context of COVID-19. Twenty-five manuscripts met the inclusion criteria and were predominantly from the United States, with three international studies. The majority of the studies included CM reports during COVID-19 based on official data. The results clearly demonstrated an increased risk for children alongside a worrisome international decrease in CM reports. Only two studies addressed interventions during the pandemic. The current review highlights that, along with the obligation of scholars to advance the protection of children during COVID-19, there is much that is unknown. Future studies should examine the impact of the pandemic on children and their surrounding systems as well as child protective services’ responses, which face enormous challenges during a pandemic. An additional conclusion is that, since children were not identified as a health risk group during the pandemic, their protection rights may have been jeopardized. Furthermore, the variance identified in the policies of different countries pinpoints the urgent need to establish an international protocol for protecting children from maltreatment during COVID-19, a protocol that will hopefully be a basis for policymakers worldwide.

COVID-19 大流行产生了深远的影响。随着社会努力将感染降至最低，人们对儿童的后果产生了疑问。初步研究表明，全球儿童保护服务迫切需要调整现有政策和做法，以保护儿童在此期间免受虐待，这是当前系统文献综述的基本原理。本综述审查了 2020 年 3 月至 2020 年 10 月发表在同行评审期刊上的关于 COVID-19 背景下虐待儿童 (CM) 的研究。25 篇手稿符合纳入标准，主要来自美国，还有 3 篇国际研究。大多数研究包括基于官方数据的 COVID-19 期间的 CM 报告。结果清楚地表明，随着 CM 报告在国际上令人担忧的减少，儿童的风险增加了。只有两项研究涉及大流行期间的干预措施。当前的审查强调，除了学者们有义务在 COVID-19 期间推进对儿童的保护外，还有很多未知之处。未来的研究应该检查大流行对儿童及其周围系统的影响以及儿童保护服务的反应，这些在大流行期间面临着巨大的挑战。另一个结论是，由于儿童在大流行期间未被确定为健康风险群体，因此他们的保护权利可能受到威胁。此外，