The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
UNICEF has launched a communication campaign to raise awareness on the impact of climate change on children where they seek to put children at the centre of the climate change debate and to also make the climate budget child focused.
The campaign will centre on children by providing them with a platform for to share their views and make calls for more child centered climate funding and will run a petition campaign for everyone to join.
They said Climate Change Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis as 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 Mr Yves Willemot, Chief of Communications at UNICEF.
He added that for the most vulnerable children, climate impacts worsen their situation placing additional risk to their rights and further reducing their access to basic services.
Furthermore he said today, only 2.4 percent of Multilateral Climate Funds globally is set aside for children and young people saying there is a need for more funds allocated directly to interventions that benefit children.
To deal with the challenges of climate change, energy and environment UNICEF calls for urgent action on four fronts which are;
Putting children at the centre of climate change policies, strategies, plans and budgets and make them child sensitive, empowering children and young people to be environmental stewards and climate change agents, allowing them to realise their potential with full participation.
They also call upon governments to enable children’s participation in the climate agenda, critical to ensure the future is fit for today’s children and today’s children are fit for the future and to also provide climate resilience services in health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, education and protection, so children can survive, develop and thrive.
@NyembeziMu
