A rights group warned on Wednesday that one billion children are at “extremely high risk” as a result of climate change impacts, adding that youths’ living standards have not improved in the last ten years.
Approximately 820 million children worldwide, or more than one-third of all children, are currently exposed to heatwaves, according to the KidsRights index, which was created using data from UN agencies.
920 million children globally were afflicted by water scarcity, while 600 million children, or one in every four, were affected by diseases like malaria and dengue, according to Dutch NGO KidsRights.
Out of 185 nations, the KidsRights Index ranks Iceland, Sweden, and Finland as the best for children’s rights and Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Chad as the worst. It is the first and only ranking that evaluates how children’s rights are upheld on an annual basis.
Only Sweden’s rank among the top three countries changed from the previous year, rising from fourth to second.
The research from this year, according to Marc Dullaert, founder and chairman of KidsRights, is “alarming for our current and future generations of children.”
“A rapidly changing climate is now threatening their futures and their basic rights,” he said.
“There has been no significant progress in the standards of children’s lives over the past decade and on top of that their livelihoods have been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dullaert added.
Approximately 286,000 children under the age of five died as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak because they were unable to access food or treatment owing to disruptions and clinic closures, according to KidsRights.
According to the KidsRights Index, which is put together in partnership with Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the number of child labourers has increased to 160 million for the first time in twenty years, or an increase of 8.4 million during the last four years.
Angola and Bangladesh were singled out by KidsRights as having greatly improved their rankings in terms of children’s rights.
Bangladesh has practically cut in half the number of underweight children under the age of five, whereas Angola has more than cut in half the mortality rate for children under the age of five.
Montenegro, which was rated 49 on the index, was also criticised in the study for having poor immunisation rates.
The poll makes use of UN data to assess how well-adhered to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child various nations are.
