(United Nations) Floods, storms, droughts… disasters fueled by climate change have caused 43.1 million child displacements between 2016 and 2021, and this is only “the tip of the iceberg”, warns UNICEF, deploring the lack of attention paid to these “invisible” victims.
The UN agency recounts in this report published Thursday the trauma of Juana, who was 9 years old in 2020 when the town where she lived in Guatemala was submerged by water after the hurricanes eta And Iota. Or the story of young sisters Mia and Maia who saw their mobile home destroyed by flames in California.
“We took our belongings to the highway where we lived for weeks,” describes Abdul Azim, a Sudanese child whose village flooded in August 2022 was only accessible by boat.
Statistics on internal displacement linked to climate disasters do not generally take age into account, but UNICEF has worked in particular with the NGO Internal Displacement Monitoring Center to disaggregate the data and ensure that children are no longer “invisible”.
Between 2016 and 2021, four types of climate disasters (floods, storms, droughts, fires), whose frequency and intensity are increasing with global warming, resulted in 43.1 million internal displacements of children from 44 countries, 95% of them linked to floods and storms, according to the report.
“This is the equivalent of around 20,000 movements of children per day,” Laura Healy, one of the authors, told AFP, stressing that these minors are then exposed to multiple risks, from possible separation from their families to child trafficking networks.
These data formally count the number of child movements and not the number of children moved, since the same child may be moved several times.
They do not make it possible to differentiate between prior evacuations and movements following the weather event.
And they “radically” underestimate drought-related displacement, occurring more slowly and therefore more difficult to monitor, and do not include migration.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg, based on the available data. The reality is that with the impact of climate change and better tracking of movements for slower weather events, the number of uprooted children is going to be much greater,” insists Laura Healy.
“Too slowly”
The report puts forward very partial projections, for a few specific events.
Floods linked to overflowing rivers alone could cause 96 million child displacements in the next 30 years, cyclonic winds 10.3 million and marine submersions linked to storms 7.2 million. Figures which do not include preventive evacuations.
“For those forced to flee, the fear and repercussions of such disasters can be particularly devastating, with worry about whether they will ever be able to return home, return to school, or whether they will be forced to leave again,” underlines UNICEF boss Catherine Russell in a press release.
“The move may have saved their lives, but it’s a very destabilizing change,” she adds. “We have the tools and knowledge to respond to this growing challenge facing children, but we are moving far too slowly.”
UNICEF is calling on world leaders to address this issue at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai in a few weeks.
We must prepare these children, including those who are already uprooted, “to live in a world where the climate has changed,” emphasizes Laura Healy.
Even though the growing impacts of climate change are hitting everywhere, the report singles out areas that are particularly vulnerable.
Thus, the Philippines, India and China are the countries most affected in absolute numbers (nearly 23 million child displacements in 6 years), due to their very large population, their geographical location, but also preventive evacuation plans.
But looking at the proportion of displaced children, the image highlights the vulnerability of Africa and small islands. Dominica has seen 76% of its children displaced in 6 years, Cuba and Saint Martin more than 30%, Vanuatu 25%, the Philippines 23%…