The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
