The effects of climate change threaten a billion children and overall living standards for minors around the world have not improved over the past decade, the NGO KidsRights said on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also had a significant impact on minors, sometimes deprived of food or medicine due to disruptions in the health sector, leading to the death of some 286,000 children under five, said the Dutch NGO in an annual study.
Published annually, the “KidsRights Index” ranks 185 countries according to their compliance with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, based on UN data.
Iceland, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands occupy the first places in the 2022 ranking, closed by the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Chad.
The 2022 study is “alarming for our current and future generations of children,” Marc Dullaert, founder and president of KidsRights, said in a statement.
“A rapidly changing climate is now threatening their future and their fundamental rights,” Dullaert said.
“There has been no significant progress in the standard of living of children over the past decade and, in addition, their livelihoods have been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said. he adds.
For the first time in two decades, the number of working children has risen to 160 million, an increase of 8.4 million over the past four years, according to the “KidsRights Index”, compiled with the Erasmus University of rotterdam.
However, the study welcomes the progress made by some countries. Angola has more than halved under-five mortality, while Bangladesh has nearly halved the number of underweight under-fives. Bolivia, for its part, has almost halved its number of accidents involving children at work.
Second last year, Switzerland fell to 31st place “due to the country’s insufficient implementation of the principle of the ‘best interests of the child’ in decisions concerning children”. underlined the NGO.
Other countries were singled out by the report, including Nigeria, 175th, for the high rate of deaths of mothers during childbirth, and Montenegro, 49th, due to low vaccination rates.