COP28: Van der Heijden (Unicef), “states must take action to uphold children’s rights to a clean, healthy and sustainable planet”

“Our success or failure in tackling the climate crisis will be judged by two numbers. Keeping 1.5 degrees alive and protecting the 1 billion child lives that are in jeopardy from this crisis. The climate crisis is not just changing the planet. It is changing children. Children’s bodies and minds are uniquely vulnerable to climate impacts and children are disproportionately affected by this crisis not of their making”. This was stated by the deputy executive director of Unicef, Kitty van der Heijden, regarding COP28. “Yet today, thirty years after the UNFCCC was signed, children’s needs, rights and perspectives are almost totally absent from climate policy, action and investment at all levels. COP28 can put this right. Leaders must put children at the heart of the COP28 outcomes, giving their unique vulnerabilities, needs and rights the gravity they deserve”. She adds: “Parties to the Paris Agreement agreed that when taking climate action, states should respect, promote, and consider the rights of children, as well as intergenerational equity […]. States must take action to uphold children’s rights to a clean, healthy and sustainable planet”. Click here to find out more about why children all over the world need urgent action against climate change.
Valentina Bombelli