Extreme weather events fueled by climate change have displaced more than 43 million over the past six years, research by the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) has found.
From 2016 to 2021, floods, storms, droughts and wildfires – spurred by global warming – led to the uprooting of 43.1 million children in 44 countries, says a report by Unicef and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), published Thursday.
Ninety-five percent of those displacements were caused by floods and storms.
"It's the equivalent of about 20,000 child displacements every day," co-author Laura Healy told the AFP news agency, stressing affected children are then at risk of suffering other traumas such as being separated from their parents or falling victim to child traffickers.
China, India and the Philippines saw nearly 23 million child displacements in six years – just over half the total – due to their huge populations and geographic locations.
But the greatest proportion of child IDPs were in Africa and small island nations. Seventy-six percent of children in the small Caribbean island of Dominica were displaced following Hurricane Maria in 2017. For Cuba and Saint-Martin, that figure was more than 30 percent.
'Tip of the iceberg'
Statistics on internal displacements caused by climate disasters generally do not account for the age of the victims.
But Unicef worked with the non-governmental Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre to unpick the data and reveal the hidden toll on children.
The data reflect the number of displacements and not the number of children affected, as the same child could be uprooted more than once.
The figures do not allow for a distinction between those evacuated before a weather event, and those forced to leave in the wake of a disaster.
According to Healy, the number of displacements due to drought is "radically underreported" because they are more difficult to quantify.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg based on the available data that we have," she said.
'Far too slowly'
The Unicef report offers some partial predictions, for specific events.
Floods linked to overflowing rivers could spark 96 million child displacements in the next 30 years, while cyclonic winds could force 10.3 million displacements, it says. Storms surges could lead to 7.2 million displacements.
None of those estimates include preventive evacuations.
"For those who are forced to flee, the fear and impact can be especially devastating, with worry of whether they will return home, resume school, or be forced to move again," Unicef executive director Catherine Russell said.
"Moving may have saved their lives, but it's also very disruptive.
"As the impacts of climate change escalate, so too will climate-driven movement. We have the tools and knowledge to respond to this escalating challenge for children, but we are acting far too slowly."
Unicef called on world leaders to take up the issue at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai in November and December.
(with AFP)
