Children are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The escalating climate crisis is undermining improvements made in children’s health, nutrition, access to education and legal protection since the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
The Global Climate Crisis: A Child Rights Crisis, lays out the critical steps needed to protect children and their rights from the dangers posed by climate change. We cannot let the climate crisis jeopardise the gains made for so many children in the last 30 years.
How to realise children’s rights in a changing climate
Governments must protect and uphold children’s rights in the face of the climate crisis, by limiting global warming as much as possible, and adopting measures which protect the rights of children everywhere.
- Governments’ obligations to children necessitate limiting warming to a maximum of 1.5ºC, along with a significant increase in investments in adaptation measures which protect the rights of all children.
- Strong children’s rights safeguards must be integrated into all climate action.
- Children’s right to be heard must be upheld, by engaging them fully in strategies and action to meet the climate crisis.
- Governments should integrate climate change in education, to ensure children can meaningfully participate in decision-making, and that they are not left behind in the transition to a sustainable economy.
The Global Climate Crisis: A Child Rights Crisis lays out the critical steps needed from governments and those involved in policy and delivery to protect children and their rights from the dangers posed by climate change.