On the many pressing problems related to child welfare, the report recommended specific steps it said the Vatican should take: stop obstructing efforts by victims’ advocates in some countries to extend statutes of limitations, which now allow most abusers to escape prosecution; stop insisting that victims sign confidentiality agreements swearing them to silence as a condition for receiving compensation; help birth parents locate children who were taken from them for adoption out of Catholic institutions like the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland; and identify, count and financially support children fathered by Catholic priests without imposing confidentiality agreements on the mothers.

Image Kirsten Sandberg, the chairwoman of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, in Geneva on Wednesday. Credit... Anja Niedringhaus/Associated Press

Kirsten Sandberg, the chairwoman of the United Nations panel, said Wednesday at a news conference in Geneva that tens of thousands of children around the world had suffered abuse by priests. “We think it is a horrible thing that is being kept silent both by the Holy See itself and in the different local parishes,” she said.

The panel rejected the church’s key contention that the Vatican has no jurisdiction over its bishops and priests around the world, and is responsible for putting in effect the Convention on the Rights of the Child only within the tiny territory of Vatican City. By ratifying the convention, the panel said, the Vatican took responsibility for making sure it was respected by individuals and institutions under the Holy See’s authority around the world.

The panel’s report on the Vatican’s treatment of children, its first in 14 years, called on the church to report back on its progress in 2017. Although the panel’s recommendations are not binding, Ms. Sandberg said it expected Francis and the Holy See to act on them.

Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, who was abused by a priest as a child, said the report was “long overdue.”

“It is wonderful that the U.N. has spoken so clearly about what the Vatican has done — and what it has failed to do,” said Ms. Dorris, who is based in St. Louis. “To us, it is a call for the civil authorities to step in. Church officials have proved they cannot police themselves.”

But Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the pope’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva, characterized the United Nations report in a radio interview as “a rather negative approach” to steps the Vatican had already taken, and said the report “in some ways is not up-to-date.” He said a Vatican delegation had told the committee about “concrete measures” that were being taken, including the new papal commission.