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Climate change

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20 November 2024

Sub-Saharan Africa faces unique challenges in safeguarding children’s futures amid climate and demographic shifts

NEW YORK, JOHANNESBURG, 20 November 2024 – Children in sub-Saharan Africa are at heightened risk in a rapidly changing world affected by extreme climate crises, shifting population dynamics, and widening technological gaps, according to UNICEF’s flagship report released on World Children’s Day. The State of the Wo...

19 November 2024

2024 World Children’s Day: 7,000 children from Southern Africa lead the call for quality and inclusive education in Africa

VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE, 19 November 2024 – Children from seven countries in Southern Africa met their leaders in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe this weekend to call for improved conditions in education and better protection when schools become unsafe due to conflict or extreme weather. The more than 7,000 children met...

19 November 2023

Sub-regional Call to Action

All children have the right to a quality education, to grow up in a safe and secure environment and to be protected from harm. Children’s rights are human rights, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, yet too many children cannot realize these rights and face exclusion, discrimination, violence a...

16 November 2023

Southern African children rally for their rights, urging action for equal education, climate, and protection from violence

Walvis Bay, Namibia, 16 November 2023 – Children from Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have voiced the priority issues affecting them and that they want to address to their leaders for action. This call to action emerged from a virtual gathering facilitated by UNICEF in which children and young people discussed topics that have the greatest…

18 October 2023

Child rights and climate

Despite their minimal contribution to emissions, climate change disproportionately harms children and youth. In Eastern and Southern Africa, the rising temperatures are exacerbating or causing droughts, storms, floods, locust swarms, food insecurity, water shortages, and conflicts, representing perhaps the most pr...

01 September 2023

Time to Act: African children in the climate change spotlight

This report highlights the disproportionate impact of climate change on children in Africa, a region that has contributed minimally to global carbon emissions. Drawing on data from the Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) developed by UNICEF, the report emphasizes how children are biologically less equipped to han...

01 September 2023

Children in 98 per cent of African countries at high or extremely high risk of the impacts of climate change: UNICEF

NAIROBI, 1 September 2023 – Children in Africa are among the most at risk of the impacts of climate change but are woefully neglected by the key climate financing flows required to help them adapt, survive and respond to the climate crisis. According to a UNICEF report released today, Time to Act: African children...

Vulnerable children in the Horn of Africa have been living through insecurity for years

After five poor or failed rainy seasons in the last three years in the Horn of Africa, millions have lost their cattle, crops and entire livelihoods. Major outbreaks including cholera, measles, malaria, and other diseases are ongoing across the region, worsened by extreme weather conditions and fragile health sys...

Horn of Africa: Over 7 million children under the age of 5 remain malnourished across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia

NAIROBI/JOHANNESBURG, 23 MAY 2023 - Children in the Horn of Africa are living through an unprecedented large-scale crisis of hunger, displacement, water scarcity, and insecurity. More than 7 million children under the age of 5 remain malnourished and in need of urgent nutrition support, and over 1.9 million childr...

Building climate change into care reform in Eastern and Southern Africa

This paper argues that climate change is the greatest current and future threat to children’s care in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Responding to this threat requires urgent coordinated action related to care reform policies and interventions and climate change responses. The paper begins with a descript...

22 December 2022

Regional Call to Action

Today, approximately 36.3 million people in the Horn of Africa—including 20.2 million children—require critical and timely support in response to the worst drought crisis of the past 40 years. While droughts have occurred in this region in the past, the magnitude of the current crisis and its underlying drivers ha...

20 November 2022

500 Southern African children meet with their Presidents to mark World Children’s Day

Lusaka, 20 November 2022 – The Presidents of Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and the Vice President of Namibia have come together in a summit led by around 500 children to mark World Children’s Day. Under the theme of “A Better Future for Every Child” the event presented a unique opportunity to foster dialogue between children and the highest…