Rise in temperature and weather shifts due to climate change have a gruesome effect on human life and health globally. It is less known, however, that children are disproportionally affected due to climate change. Around 2.2 billion children are at extremely high risk of being affected by climate change, according to the assessment made by Unicef in 2020. Even the levels of violence and exploitation against children tend to increase with the impact of the ensuing disasters, as documented in a recent white paper by Barnfonden, a member of the ChildFund Alliance in Sweden.
Children are the least responsible for climate change and environmental degradation but will bear the greatest brunt.
The WHO quotes the figure of an estimated 1 billion children aged 2 to 17 experiencing physical, sexual, or emotional violence each year, based on the WHO's information in 2020.
