In an urgent call to action, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has launched a groundbreaking communication campaign to shed light on the impact of climate change on the world’s children.The campaign, launched Wednesday, aims to place children at the forefront of the global dialogue on climate change and advocate for increased investment in initiatives that safeguard their rights and well-being.
The humanitarian organisation highlighted that the climate crisis is unequivocally a child rights crisis. “The Climate Change Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis. Climate change is impacting the lives of children worldwide, also in Zimbabwe. It creates scarcity in access to safe water and food, impacts on the health of children, increases children’s vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, and jeopardises their well-being, even threatening their survival.
“Everywhere children are increasingly exposed to climate or environmental hazards, such as flooding, drought, heatwaves, cyclones, and air pollution. As these extreme weather events increase in frequency and ferocity, they threaten children’s lives, jeopardise children’s access to healthy food they need for their development and destroy infrastructure critical to their well-being such as schools, health care facilities and children’s playgrounds,” said UNICEF
The organisation added “Children, who are the least responsible for climate change, are paradoxically the most affected by its consequences. Yet, they remain largely absent from climate discourse. It is imperative that we amplify their voices and prioritize their needs in climate action.”
Zimbabwe, in particular, is grappling with the escalating impacts of climate change, including floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, and heatwaves. These environmental hazards exacerbate existing vulnerabilities among children, posing significant risks to their rights and access to essential services.
Highlighting a critical disparity, UNICEF revealed that only a tiny fraction of multilateral Climate Funds worldwide is allocated for children and young people. “UNICEF today launches a communication campaign to raise awareness on the impact of climate change on children; put children at the centre of the climate change debate; and to make the climate budget child focused. Today, only 2.4 % of Multilateral Climate Funds globally is set aside for children and young people. There is a need for more funds allocated directly to interventions that benefit children,” said the humanitarian organisation.
The communication campaign launched by UNICEF aims to achieve several key objectives, including raising awareness about the disproportionate impact of climate change on children, advocating for children to be at the center of climate policies and budgets, and fostering youth empowerment as environmental stewards and climate change agents.
