Nearly 1 in 4 children across Eastern and Southern Africa exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards

NAIROBI, 16 June 2026 – On the Day of the African Child, UNICEF's Children's Climate Risk Report 2026 warns that children across Eastern and Southern Africa are facing overlapping climate shocks that are disrupting essential services, undermining children's rights and deepening inequality.

Across the region, over 65 million children, close to one in four, are already exposed to three or more overlapping climate hazards, from droughts and fires to floods and tropical storms. These climate shocks are increasingly affecting the essential services that children rely on for survival, health and learning, including critical water and sanitation systems.

Using advanced geospatial analysis, the report maps children’s exposure to the eight most frequent climate threats, as well as two climate-sensitive hazards: air pollution and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. For the first time, the report reveals exactly where, and how intense, multiple and overlapping climate threats are affecting children and overwhelming essential services.

“On the Day of the African Child, this report is a timely reminder that the climate crisis is increasingly becoming a child rights crisis,” said Etleva Kadilli, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa. “When climate disasters strike, the impact multiplies. Water systems fail. Schools close. Clinics are damaged. This is how inequality deepens and children’s futures are put at risk.”

UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Report 2026 combines children's exposure to climate hazards with their vulnerability, including access to healthcare, clean water, education, nutrition and social protection, helping identify where risks are greatest and where investments will be most effective.

The report finds that Somalia and Madagascar are among the countries with the highest overall exposure to multiple climate hazards globally, meaning children face a wide range of recurring climate threats. Children in South Sudan, meanwhile, are among those most exposed to multiple high-intensity hazards, when climate shocks are particularly severe.

Access to safe water and sanitation is one of the factors used by the report to assess children's vulnerability to climate risks. In 2024, one in three people in the region still lacked at least basic drinking water, while two in three lacked basic sanitation and hygiene services.

As the African Union marks 2026 as the Year of Water and Sanitation, the report highlights the critical role climate-resilient water and sanitation services play in protecting children's health, learning and wellbeing. Investments such as flood-protected infrastructure, diversified water sources and solar-powered pumping can help keep schools, health facilities and communities functioning during climate shocks.

“Water systems are under immense pressure,” continued Kadilli. “When boreholes dry up or floods contaminate water sources, children lose access not only to clean drinking water, but to safe schools and functioning health facilities. Climate-resilient water and sanitation services are not a luxury; they are a lifeline for children's health, learning and future opportunities."

Without urgent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, climate hazards will become more frequent and severe, placing even greater strain on public budgets and threatening children’s survival, development and future opportunities.

To protect children’s rights from climate threats and help them adapt to growing environmental changes, collective action is needed to;

• Prioritise children in climate adaptation programming, ensuring that health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, child protection and social protection systems are climate-resilient and fully integrated into National Adaptation Plans, Nationally Determined Contribution plans and disaster response strategies.
• Direct climate finance to where children’s risks are highest, including mobilising resources for fragile and high-risk contexts, together with simplified approval processes for smaller, high-impact resilience investments.
• Leverage emerging financing mechanisms, including the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), to rebuild and climate-proof child-critical services such as clinics, schools, water systems and shock-responsive social protection programmes.

"Financing must match the scale of the threat. Investing in climate-resilient, critical essential services is not just about managing disasters; it is about protecting children's rights today and safeguarding Africa's future prosperity," concluded Kadilli.

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Note to editors:
To better understand the potential severity and frequency of climate threats throughout a child's life, the methodology uses a probabilistic model based on a 100-year return period. This approach captures extreme climate events that are highly likely to occur in any given year and highlights the most significant hazards children are exposed to.

The CCRR 2026 looks at children’s exposure to eight climate hazards: coastal floods, droughts, extreme heat, fires, heatwaves, riverine floods, sand and dust storms, and tropical storms, as well as two climate-sensitive hazards such as air pollution and vector borne diseases; while considering inherent vulnerabilities of children across seven dimensions: water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), nutrition, protection, health, education, poverty, and child survival. 

This report includes updated data and models covering a broader range of hazards and vulnerabilities, compared to UNICEF’s 2021 The climate crisis is a child rights crisis report. The analysis now encompasses most countries and territories – including Small Island Developing States – and utilises a pixel-level multi-hazard approach, providing higher-resolution data at a gridded scale. Hazard data are now available for areas as small as 100 square kilometres in each country, with some hazards mapped at a 100-metre resolution.

Data from this analysis part of the UNICEF global report Children's Climate Risk Report 2026. Additional information available here.