According to the report, more than 43 million children suffered from 2016 to 2021.
United Nations:
Weather disasters caused by climate change – from floods to droughts, storms to forest fires – have displaced 43.1 million children between 2016 and 2021, the UN Children’s Fund warned on Thursday, condemning the lack of attention to the victims.
In a comprehensive report on the issue, the United Nations agency detailed the heartbreaking stories of some of the children affected, and co-author Laura Healy told AFP that the data revealed only the “tip of the iceberg”, while there was likely many more are affected. .
“We moved our belongings to the highway, where we lived for weeks,” said Sudanese child Khalid Abdul Azim, whose flooded village was only accessible by boat.
In 2017, sisters Mia and Maia Bravo watched flames engulf their California trailer from the back of the family minivan.
“I was scared and shocked,” Maia said in the report. “I would stay up all night.”
Statistics on internal displacement due to climate disasters generally do not take into account the age of victims.
But UNICEF worked with the non-governmental Internal Displacement Monitoring Center to unravel the data and expose the hidden toll on children.
From 2016 to 2021, four types of climate disasters (floods, storms, droughts and forest fires) – the frequency of which have increased due to global warming – led to the displacement of 43.1 million children in 44 countries, the report said.
Ninety-five percent of these displacements were caused by floods and storms.
“It amounts to around 20,000 child displacements every day,” Healy told AFP, underscoring how affected children are then at risk of other traumas, such as being separated from their parents or falling victim to child traffickers.
The data reflects the number of displaced and not the number of children affected, as the same child can be uprooted more than once.
The figures do not allow a distinction between those evacuated before a weather event and those forced to leave after a disaster.
And according to Healy, the number of people displaced due to drought is “radically underreported” because they happen less suddenly and are therefore harder to quantify.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg based on the available data we have,” she said.
“The reality is that due to the effects of climate change, or better tracking of displacement when it comes to slow events, the number of children displaced from their homes will be much higher.”
– ‘Much too slow’ –
The UNICEF report provides some partial predictions for specific events.
Floods linked to overflowing rivers could lead to 96 million child displacements over the next 30 years, while cyclonic winds could lead to 10.3 million displacements, the report says. Storm surges could cause up to 7.2 million people to be displaced.
None of these estimates include preventive evacuations.
“For those forced to flee, the fear and impact can be particularly devastating, with them worrying whether they will return home, return to school or be forced to move again,” said Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, in a statement.
“Moving may have saved their lives, but it’s also very disruptive,” Russell said.
“As the impacts of climate change escalate, so will the climate-driven movement. We have the resources and knowledge to respond to this escalating challenge for children, but we are acting far too slowly.”
UNICEF called on world leaders to raise the issue at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in November and December.
Healy says children, including those already forced to move, need to be prepared “to live in a world that is causing climate change.”
Even as the increasing impacts of climate change affect large parts of the planet, the UNICEF report shines a light on particularly vulnerable countries.
China, India and the Philippines are the countries with the largest number of displaced people (nearly 23 million in six years) due to their huge populations and their geographical location – but also because of their preventive evacuation plans.
But proportionately, Africa and small island states are most at risk: in Dominica, 76 percent of all children were displaced between 2016 and 2021. For Cuba and Saint-Martin it was more than 30 percent.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
